


no one needs saving (except maybe natasha)

by widowcapsicle



Series: tortured 'verse [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, BAMF Bobbi Morse, BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Steve Rogers, Betrayal, Big Sister Bobbi Morse, Catholic Steve Rogers, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Deaf Clint Barton, Dubious Morality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual Romance, F/M, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Manipulation, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Nick Fury is Not Amused, Protective Steve Rogers, Top Steve Rogers, but he still has the serum so he can do badass things like parkour and get objectified by women, he was born like in the 80s, steve was never in the ice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:45:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/widowcapsicle/pseuds/widowcapsicle
Summary: Natasha defected, as was told in canonverse. But, what happens if she is tasked to surrender in order to manipulate the other side? What if her ties to Russia were never severed in the first place? A ruse of a defection.ORThe one where the Black Widow makes Captain America fall in love with her only to betray himonlyto find out that she is actually in love with him.





	1. farewell russia

**Then.**

"Americans are weak, Natalia." Her instructors have been speaking to her in english for the past few months, their Russian accents tight and dense in their intonations. They said that they have something planned for her, an assignment that will finally take over the power of the west, and her indoctrinated hatred for the Americans have made her more eager to carry it out. She hasn't been told until today. "They are soft. That is why they cannot be the leader of the world."

Natasha was nineteen, her examination had just finished the prior year and her time in the Red Room had been terminated after her graduation. Some would call it the sterilization commencement, but she didn't much care about the specifics. She had gone on many KGB assignments, notching up more than a score of assassinations under her name. Word has gotten around about the Black Widow and it's caused international unrest, something she knew her superiors intended.

Alexi Bruskin was holding her shoulders, taking care of her shirt by straightening them out with his hands. Physical touch or intimacy among comrades wasn't commonplace, so the action was concerning for her. There were the occasional sexual escapades that were merely one-sided, but this form of sentiment was different. She had never even been hugged platonically since starting in the Academy twelve years ago, so this encounter was surprising. He set his hands on her shoulders and continued his speech. "We have created for you to be the best in world. You won't fail us." To the spy, he seemed almost hopeful, not an expression she's been accustomed to seeing. Confident? Yes. Hope? She could have lived her whole life not having known the definition of the word considering she's never even been across it until now. "They will come for you, but they will save you. You have to pretend that you are defecting." The hard pronunciations of his 'w's and 'b's and how they sounded like 'v's carried around in the room.

She found herself replying in well-polished english. "I will do whatever it takes."

He continued explaining the plan. They had no idea how many agents S.H.I.E.L.D. would put out for her, but she's been on the radar of seven international agencies and thirteen national ones because of her threat to global security, so Alexi assumed there would be plenty. This was a pep-talk, a small articulation of encouragement—yet another expression that she wasn't familiar with. Her past missions had been different. Alexi would walk in her room, give her a file, exit the room, and then let her know over the speaker system that she must leave at a certain time. There were no words exchanged, just a dossier and her given task. It was an efficient way to work, so she didn't understand why it was so different now. Because she's not programmed to ask questions about her assignments, she kept quiet despite the burning concerns in her head.

"You will be gone for awhile," he said to her. She didn't move, letting him continue the rest of the briefing. "They will take you and you will be one of them but you have to promise me that you will never forget what you are there for." She nodded in response, enough to ease her teacher. "Always remember that we are for you. You serve our country. Do not let us down."

Perhaps she didn't grasp the idea of how long she was going to be gone, but it became evident that the conversation was a farewell. It let her know that they would be going without contact for awhile and he needed to speak about as much as he could in order to ensure her safety, as well as make up for the time that will be lost. Alexi said that he expects at least six years for the plan to work, and she was sure that her commitment to Mother Russia will allow her to sustain the missing connection with her people, all to preserve and to guarantee the evident power of her nation. Her instructor went over everything again as if she hadn't locked it down the first time, brandishing in her head the coordinates of where they will meet exactly on this day after she had infiltrated the Americans.

What came after was more familiar. He pulled out a file and gave it to her, and with one last look, he left her alone in her room. She opened the dossier, reading the name Asad Majeed Khan on the paper's header and his photograph. There was more information about him and she tried to eidetically capture every thing about the man. "The Jet will leave at 1700, Natalia." He spoke in Russian for the first time in awhile, probably because it might be the last words he'll utter to her for the next six years. "I know you will not forget us, just conquer and the power will all be ours. Our country's domination relies on your success." She didn't speak, remaining expressionless as she's always been.

Natasha stared at the clock, letting her know that there were four hours before departure. She gathered her things together, the Black Widow gauntlets that they created for her. Her wrists felt heavy with the electrical bracelets and her feet stomped with the weight of the guns on her thighs. This was her favorite part, locking in all of the ammo she'll need and her other gadgets that they had gifted her. She had never been so grateful in her life having received a grappling hook. Natasha stared at Khan's photo one last time and discarded the file, walking out of the room as she made her way to the hangar.

* * *

"I'm getting real tired of this," Steve Rogers had his arms crossed as he leaned his back against a table, his eyes fixed on the news presented on the giant screen before him.

"I most definitely already am," said the man standing next to him. He was relaxed, but the way he fiddled with the fletching of an arrow told Steve everything about the frustration he was feeling.

Clint Barton had been sent out multiple times to terminate the Black Widow, but every time he felt himself getting closer to her, she managed to evade. They had stumbled last in Kazakhstan six months ago, but she threw him into an electrical fit and fled, though he did end up putting an arrow in her arm. Fury's had her on his hit list for so long that the archer could feel his patience wavering.

The information on the computer screens was about the death of a Russian ambassador in North Korea. It always ended the same, there were few casualties, if any, most of the guards being knocked out and their lives spared. But every time, the Black Widow achieved cutting the throat of her target or putting a bullet straight into their chest pumps. Sometimes it would be between the eyes, but nothing surprised the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents anymore. All they knew was that she was a notorious assassin, they didn't really care about her modus operandi.

The Russian ambassador was stabbed in the heart this time, the extremely graphic photo shown on the television. Her red hourglass symbol was engraved on the tactical knife she'd purposefully left at the scene, taking credit for the kill. That seemed odd to both of the agents watching, because she'd never left traces of her behind, no matter what it was. Though she would wink at the cameras sometimes only because she was confident enough to show her face. But never has she left a relic of her own in the blood bath she creates.

"We have the knife," they heard Fury say, prompting them both to turn around and gather the files Fury had left on the table. "Standard blade, your common tactical knife."

Steve sighed. "So we have nothing?"

"On the knife? Yes. But on her? Not entirely," he said. The man switched the television to electronic versions of the physical S.H.I.E.L.D. files. "We managed to infiltrate one of the KGB compounds and we just received intel about where her next assignment is."

Fury put up the same dossier that Natasha had seen just hours before. "That's our Pakistani diplomat," said Steve as he looked at the man's biography.

"He's on US airspace right now. He just left to go back to the Parliament and our sources say that he's going to be intercepted when he lands in Islamabad," the man said as he turned the television off. Looking at the men, he informed, "Get on a quinjet with your S.T.R.I.K.E. team, Rogers. I need this woman finished."

Barton almost slumped his shoulders in disappointment, thinking that Fury was going to exclude him out of this mission from all of the times that he had failed. "Get your ass up, Barton. You have a Russian to exterminate." The man walked out leaving the two agents to gather their things and head to Pakistan.

"We're getting her this time," said the captain as the two paced out of the command room and into the hangar.

Clint almost looked like he was furious. "If I have to die to get her, promise me that you'll leave me."

Steve shook his head. "That's asinine."

"No, it's my job."

"Your job is to catch her and mine is to clear the way for you and protect Khan. Dying isn't part of the order," he said as he went to his S.T.R.I.K.E. team and briefed them on their mission. The men in black started jogging to get their tactical vests on and to gather their weapons before running to the aircraft waiting to take them to the Middle East in hyper speed.

Clint shook his head and counted the arrows in his quiver before hitching them onto his back. "I'm just tired."

"I know. We all are," the soldier responded. The men took seats as the jet flew them twenty-thousand feet in the air. "Just don't do anything stupid."

The archer nodded and leaned his seat back, pulling his shades over his eyes and clicking a button on the sunglass bridge, activating a technological mechanism through the frame. Stark had equipped him with new tech allowing him an upper hand that he deemed would be useful for catching the assassin. He wasn't going to let her go this time.

"ETA thirty minutes, Captain," said the pilot over the jet comms. Steve nodded and hitched his shield onto his shoulder and gathered his men together.

"We have blueprints of the Parliament," he said as a three-dimensional schematic of the compound appeared from the wall of the jet. "I need pairs each manning the south and north entrances. The jet's going to be cloaked a half mile above the facility so our pilot's going to be our aerial _visual_ support. Agent 13 you'll be with me inside the building. Barton you're on the helipad escorting Khan when he gets out of the aircraft. You know what to do. If you see a sight of red, I don't care if it's blood or it's hair, you report into the comms. No one enters this building except for the diplomat and his entourage and  _no one_  exits. No one dies and we're not leaving until we get her. This will be the last Black Widow operation we'll ever have to run. We're finishing this." Everyone nodded at his orders as the quinjet entered Pakistani airspace. Each agent looked at his weapons and made sure everything is in order.

The pilot opened the ramp as the first pair of agents jumped out and onto Islamabad territory. Rogers and 13 followed shortly after. Barton exited last as the jet made a turn and stayed hovering above the compound.

"Kelso in position," the pilot said into the ears of his comrades.

"Sullivan and Eaton in position."

"Bainbridge and Taylor copy."

There was a silence over the comm as Steve waited for Barton to respond the affirmative in his ears. "Hawkeye what is your position?" Still, no response.

Clint deployed his parachute too soon so he was still in the air. He decided to let go of it sooner than intended and was in free fall of twenty feet. After a grunt and a roll, he stood straightly and looked around, hoping no one had seen his clumsy landing. "Barton in position," he said, all the agents hearing the sigh of relief from their captain.

"Captain and 13 affirmative," said Steve as he entered the Parliament building.

"I got eyes on the bird, Cap," said Kelso as the chopper made its way onto the helipad.

"Khan in sight," Barton concurred. "I'm escorting him out of the helo."

"Status report," Steve asked.

"No sign of the Widow," said the soldiers from the north. The pair from the south synchronized similarly and so did the pilot.

"Keep your eyes up," Captain said. It was eerily quiet.

Clint felt her presence, though he knew that that would be impossible. His gut was just saying that he  _knew_  she was here. It's not exactly realistic to jump to conclusions, but he couldn't help but feel it inside. "No sign, but I've got a feeling she's around, Cap," the agent said as they went inside the rooftop stairs, staying in front of the ambassador as they entered the building. Steve and Agent 13 were on opposite sides of the building, looking around for an anomaly. The archer activated the tech in his sunglasses to account for abnormalities, as well.

An hour passed and still no sign of the Black Widow, the men looking attentively in all directions, almost paranoid. "Sitrep," said Captain. And still, they all said the same thing. It was nerve-wracking.

Clint walked the ambassador inside of one of the meeting rooms where they were conducting official business, running a screen of every person there. According to the computer in his sunglasses, there were no threats inside. It wasn't until the lights started flickering off that the archer stood tentatively, an arrow propped in his bow ready to shoot at anything that was out of the ordinary. "Come on," Clint whispered as his hand was placed on his cheek, ready to let the projectile go, looking at every part of the room. It wasn't until he felt a knock on his head, someone kicking him and the arrow launching itself to the wall because of the sudden imbalance. "Hostile's in the premises," Clint said as he quickly turned around and saw no sign of the woman.

"Okay, everyone stay alert. Barton you're on hunt, 13 and I are entering the meeting room," Steve said as they switched places to protect the ambassador.

"Copy that," he said as he looked around for the woman. He saw that the ambassador was still alive, his own secret service around him for protection.

He ran out to where a window was propped open, grappling himself down, his arrow still attentive as he looked for a sign to shoot. "Nice to see you again, Agent Barton," he heard the woman speak. He launched the arrow to the direction of the voice, trigger happy as his anxiety kicked in. He really needed this woman dead. There was a laugh and he couldn't tell where it came from. She was already back inside.

"Cap, she's somewhere in that room," he said as he ran back inside the parliament, seeing that the two soldiers were down in the north entrance. "We've got friendlies on the ground, unconscious," he said over the speaker. There was a faint "shit" inside the comms, probably coming from the captain.

"You brought the cavalry," said the spy as she electrocuted Agent 13 to the ground. Steve tossed his shield at her, but she dodged it in time.

"We're not here to play games, Widow," he said to her as she crawled up a wall using one of her hooks.

"Me neither," she said with a smirk as she jumped down and fired at the soldier, the bullets bouncing off the shield that had just returned to him. "I've got a mission to do."

"So do we," he said under his breath. "I need you to leave. Now!" He yelled at the ambassador as he and his security scrambled out the door, their guns alert and ready.

Natasha didn't speak another word, launching a disc that landed on the soldier's shoulder, stunning him as she followed the ambassador. She fired shots to his guards, killing them, and she was about to hit the diplomat when an arrow hit her gun and forced it out of her hand. She jumped down to the archer and unleashed a garrote to wrap around his neck, but she was met with retaliation. The two assassins went at it with hand-to-hand combat for awhile, the soldier exiting the room and launching his shield at her again. She positioned herself around Clint, resulting in him taking the blow of the vibranium.

"Ouch," he said--breathless and winded from the hit--into the soldier's comm.

"Sorry," Steve said apologetically. Natasha used her bites on the other assassin, subduing him to the ground. She grabbed one of his arrows from his quiver and launched it manually, straight into the ambassadors chest, killing him. "Dammit," the soldier said as he ran to the woman and matched her in martial art combat.

She struggled in the fight, but found herself bouncing back and landing a few blows to the soldier's face. She grabbed a Glock hitched on her thigh and fired shots, his shield fending off every bullet. There was a step with each shot she took until she was close enough that the soldier grabbed her wrist in a split second and broke it. With a painful grunt she caught the gun as it flew out of her left hand and into the right. She put one in the soldier's shoulder and was about to launch one into his face when an arrow made it through her side, the disheveled archer standing up from his electrical sleep and another arrow ready to pierce through her chest. Instead, he shot it through her thigh, causing her to scream as she kneeled in pain. Her right hand was still holding the gun, but the soldier recovered from his shoulder wound and grabbed it.

She was sitting in the corner of the building as Captain America had a gun to her head and Hawkeye an arrow to her chest. She didn't say a word, waiting for them to launch their gauntlets, feeling herself give up. This was the plan, but she almost felt like even if it hadn't she would've let it be. Resistance was an act of power, yet she let her vulnerability take over her. Death might not be so bad. Being part of the KGB has been pretty tiring.

She wasn't going to let tears pool in her eyes, glaring at the two agents as they stared her down. She can't be seen as weak even if she planned to give up. The soldier moved and she held her breath as his hand moved over the trigger and the the next thing she felt was a blow to the head and she thought that that was the end of it.

"Fury might kill us," said Clint. The two soldiers had grabbed all of their unconscious men and dragged them into the quinjet, including the woman they were supposed to terminate.

"I know," Steve said softly.

"Not  _might_ , he  _will_. And we couldn't even save Khan," Clint said, pacing begrudgingly as the soldier sat, putting pressure on his shoulder.

The archer sighed and walked over to the woman. He had taken the two arrows buried in her and broke the ends so that the protrusion won't be accidentally hit and cause more damage. He relieved her of all her weapons, too. She was cuffed onto the makeshift table, unconscious after the soldier hit her with the magazine of her own Glock. He and the captain shared a silent conversation seconds before that moment, both coming to an agreement that they couldn't kill her when they both saw a tinge of fear in her eyes despite the pride that tried to fight through it.

"I'm not one to disobey orders," Steve started. "Unless I think there's another—better—way."

"What good do you think can come out of this?" The archer was a little apprehensive. Though he didn't disagree with the soldier, he also felt that it would be okay had it gone the other way it was initially supposed to.

"She can be a good asset to SHIELD," said Steve, his head leaning on the wall. He mustered up his pain and went over to the medical kit, annoyed with the bullet inside him. Clint notice it happen, unflinching as he stared at the woman on the table with arms crossed over his chest. Steve bit the towel that was on his shoulder as he grabbed the bullet out of his body with tweezers. He screamed into the towel again after pouring alcohol over the wound.

"What if she betrays us?"

"Then…" he used his mouth to rip off the tape that he was putting over the gauze of his shoulder. "Then we failed."

"That really doesn't make me feel any better about this," Clint said, finally looking at him.

"No one feels good about this. Not even Kelso," he said, addressing the only other conscious man in the jet. The pilot nodded, hearing their whole conversation. "But we don't live in a black and white world anymore, Clint. There isn't just good and bad. You saw her face. She's not all bad."

The archer sighed and finally grabbed a seat. "ETA one hour to New York HQ," said the pilot.

"One hour till Fury chews my ear off and fires me," Clint grumbled under his breath. The soldier laughed a little, wincing as the action moved his shoulder and pain radiated through him.

"We're too good of agents to fire," he said.

"Yeah, but we also just did something very stupid."

"Clint," he started straightly. "A few years down the road, Fury's going to thank us for bringing her in."

The archer didn't respond anymore as the two sat in silence for the remainder of the ride.

"We've got a puncture through the left flank, all the way through and out her back," said Clint as doctors rushed inside the quinjet the moment it landed. Agent Kelso had taken the liberty to call the medical team ahead to ready them for an operation "I'm also sure I shattered her femur," he said, almost apologetically to the unconscious woman.

 

"That doesn't look dead, Agent Barton," Fury said as the archer stood beside him. They were in the viewing room of the bay, watching as doctors operated on the Russian.

"I know," he said softly.

"I never took you as one who defied my orders." The director was too calm. Clint felt like he was in the eye of the hurricane, waiting for the other to erupt.

"I--"

"And what exactly kept you from doing your job?"

"I di--"

"Weren't you the one who wanted her dead so badly in the first place?" Clint didn't respond as the last two times he got interrupted, thinking that the director had more questions. It turns out that that was a mistake and the one-eyed man now stared at him, impatiently waiting for an answer. As he opened his mouth, the director took the stage again, having waited too long for a response and losing patience. "And Ambassador Khan is dead?"

"It was my call, Fury," a voice resounded down the hall as Captain America appeared with a sling around his unwounded shoulder, leavinga different medical room from a brief examination on his injury.

"And when have your tactics took precedence over mine?" He asked, trying to intimidate the captain, but Steve never really found himself ever threatened by anything. It wasn't a sign of disrespect, just his personality.

"She was afraid."

"Of course she was, people don't like the idea of dying!"

"No, sir," Steve said shaking his head as he saved Clint throughout the conversation. "It wasn't like that. She had already surrendered, it wouldn't be moral to take her life after that."

"You two had two missions. Keep the diplomat safe and exterminate the Widow. I would've been okay with only one of them succeeding, but the fact that you failed  _both_? And now brought a Russian assassin into my headquarters, where I will be forced to give her clearance, because I have no choice when she wakes up in a hospital room and sees that she's on an American government base."

"You don't have to do that," Steve said. "I'll stay with her, make sure she doesn't do anything rash and you can come up with a plan to train her an..."

Perhaps that may have been the incorrect segue. " _Train_ her? Rogers you must be out of your mind if you think that I'm going to put resources to the number one international security threat."

Steve sighed and spoke softly. "Look, you can't deny that she would be a great asset if we get her to defect. She knows everything about Russia and we can take down what we might think is happening in Siberia. If she doesn't comply then we put her in isolation—in the Raft, or any other unethical prisons you have, which I know you do."

Fury was about to protest about his latter assumption, but tabled that for the sake of the current situation. "There's too much at risk. We can't trust her."

"Then we start small. Have her work with the agents around the base. When she figures out that she wants to be a good guy then we deploy her somewhere minor, like a recon job or something. But Fury, you can't be completely against this. If this fails, the organization is in jeopardy, but if it doesn't? You have one of the greatest spies in the world."

The man sighed and shook his head. "I don't like it," he said as he walked away from the viewing room, leaving Steve and Clint to watch as the the doctors probed inside the woman.

"Me, too," Clint concurred with Fury even though he was already gone.

Steve gave him a glare. "I just saved you from getting berated by the man." Clint shrugged. "And you had as much power to have let that final arrow go, but you didn't. You thought the same as I did."

The archer sighed and put his arms on the railing in front of him. "I just hope we're right about her."

"We are," Steve said softly and confidently.

* * *

Steve looked intently at the sleeping spy. Her surgery had been a success, but she'll be on bed rest for awhile because of the fractures on her thigh. Her side was doing much better at healing than her leg so she was advised to stay off her feet. The surgeon said the the anesthesia will wear off in half and hour and Steve wanted to be there in case she went on a rampage. Against Fury's orders (again), he took the straps off of her ankles, wrists (one of them probably in searing pain when he broke it not too long ago) and chest. There was no need to treat her like a prisoner despite all she's done. He didn't want her to see him as a bad guy and bonding her appendages wouldn't be the right move for that.

He thought about the woman, the pleading in her eyes moments before she thought she was going to die. He and Clint didn't even look at each other because they both knew what the correct move was. Still, he hoped that this little leap of faith on an assassin won't turn and stab him in the back. There was a lot at stake for the gamble they made and the soldier wasn't one to take risks, but executing her seemed like the worst idea.

No one really knew what she was or where she came from. He made a dozen assumptions as to why she was such a highly skilled assassin, maybe her father had taught her at a young age and she tried out for the KGB afterwards. Maybe she was like him where she didn't really seem to be destined to be anything until one day someone magical came along and granted her the skills to be who she was now. There were a lot of maybes and he didn't think that she would be willing to tell him the truth even if he asks. She doesn't seem like the trusting kind and that's one of the first things that he knew they had to work on.

Fury had told him that he wasn't going to be on any active missions right now, wholly because he disobeyed orders and he can't really find the time out of day to trust him in doing what he says. It seemed like he and Clint would just be jeopardizing missions and Fury wasn't going to gamble that. Both of the agents knew that this was a more lenient consequence than they expected, but nonetheless still feeling the repercussions of the punishment.

There was a sudden movement on the bed, her hand twitching as she brought herself out of the drugs. Natalia opened her eyes, her eyes fluttering as they adjusted to the lights. There were white walls and a window, but a window to what? She couldn't really tell. She shifted her head to the other side, seeing a soldier with his arm stuck in a piece of fabric, letting her know that he was incapacitated.

"You're awake," he said softly, not moving in fear that he might scare her.

"Why am I alive?" was her first question.

He thought it was the correct move to take a step, but she threw her opposite arm at his face, stunning him for a moment. She took the needles out of her and got off the bed, wincing as she almost fell because she didn't expect pain to shoot up her leg and her side. She made a beeline for the door, the soldier sighing as she slowly walked over to her knowing that she won't be able to open it because it was locked from the outside, a security measure he put in place for the compromise of taking away the straps that had initially tied her to the bed.

"You won't be able to open it," he said. "We're both kind of stuck here."

"That's your mistake," she said as she ran over to the bed and flung the intravenous fluid needle, piercing Steve in the forearm he instinctively propped up to protect his face.

"Ouch," he said as he gritted his teeth. He had to force his other arm to move in order to grab the needle out of his skin, pain from his shoulder coursing through him. "Relax, Widow."

She felt threatened, looking around the room for different ways to escape. "There's a hatch on the ceiling," said Steve. She raised a brow. Why would her captor tell her how to escape? "You won't be able to go through there, though because that's where Clint usually hides out. He'll just end up putting another arrow in you. And yeah, we know you're good, but you're weak. Also, that glass is bulletproof so you can't shatter it open.  _And_  you're in a top secret government facility sprawling with a bunch of agents, thousands, like myself and Clint. You won't be able to escape even if you wanted to."

She remained silent, taking a seat on the bed to relieve her from the pain of standing up from her leg. Natasha made the practical decision of staying put because even if he was lying about the things he said, she had simply lost the willpower to fight the Americans. She didn't know why, considering that she's not the kind to give up. And also, this was her mission, so she needed to get close as soon as possible so she can go back to the KGB. She just never expected to be put in this situation almost immediately, and hoped that they weren't buttering her up to kill her down the line instead. Six years seemed too long considering that the soldier seemed to trust her already.

"We're not going to hurt you," he said as he took a seat back to where he had been before she woke up.

"I know. Americans are weak," she said, trying to get herself to believe what she had just said with complete certainty. She spat out what her instructor had told her earlier that day and--what day was it even?. How long had she been in America?

The soldier chuckled and she felt herself cringe at the fact that he wasn't taking her seriously. She always hated it when men thought they were better than her, but realized that Steve wasn't laughing patronizingly. He genuinely thought she was funny, and maybe even felt a sense of truth in what she said. "We aren't. We're just nice," he said with a charming smile that she wanted to wipe off his face with her fist.

After assessing this situation, she realized that she wasn't going to get out of there and that they wouldn't hurt her. He saw that there were straps on the bed that were meant to bind her, but considering that she was given freedom to run across the room, they were never strapped on her in the first place. The soldier noticed her thoughts as if she was saying them out loud. "I didn't want you to feel like you're a prisoner, because you're not."

"Why?"

"Why you're not a prisoner or why I'm making sure you don't feel like one?"

"Yes," she said and he let out a chuckle.

"You're supposed to be a prisoner, but I betrayed my boss's orders. And I don't want you to feel like one because you're not supposed to be." She let out a snicker and remained silent. Steve grabbed a tablet and clicked a few buttons, concerning the Russian. "I'm just letting the surgeon know that you're awake. He'll be here in a second," he reassured.

He was correct, seeing as a man in a lab coat walked in with a tablet of his own and a forced smile. "How are you doing, uhm..."

To the surprise of both men, she gave them a name. "Natasha," she said, not disclosing her real one.

The doctor's smile seemed to change into a genuine one. "How are you doing, Natasha?"

"I think I'm good to go," she said, earning a laugh from the man.

"I don't know about that," he said as he examined her thigh. He lifted up her gown to look at her side, noticing Steve look away uncomfortably. She smirked at the action, getting a complete read on the soldier. "We're putting you on meds, some of the usual painkillers and antibiotics. We're going to keep you in here for about a week so we can constantly check your surgical sites." She nodded, still uneasy at the new environment. "We'll bring you some food in a few minutes."

Steve finally looked up at her when the doctor left. "What happens after a week?" She asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"He said that he's keeping me in here for a week, but where do I go after that?"

He sighed. "Fury wants you in containment." Her brows met at the sound of the new name. "He's my boss."

"I'll be damned before I get put in an American prison," she said, Steve noticing the remnants of Russian accent in her inflections. He felt like it comes out when she's angry. "Why didn't you just kill me?"

"Because you were afraid."

"I do not fear you."

"It wasn't a fear of me," he said. "You didn't want to die."

"It would be more honorable if I had. Surrendering to my enemies is a disgusting feat of weakness," she said.

"We're on the right side," he responded.

"That's what all Americans think."

He was about to reply when someone entered rolling a tray of food. Steve realized the mistake as soon as it happened. The nurse that had entered let the door slowly close behind him instead of closing it himself. Natasha threw a pillow at the man in scrubs, disorienting him as she ran out of the room. "Black Widow's on the loose," Steve said as he activated the comm into his ear. "Fourth floor heading northeast."

"Copy," said Clint on the other side.

Natasha was running down the hallways, ridding herself of her limp as best as she could and shoving unsuspecting agents to the side. No one knew that she was in the premises because Fury had insisted on keeping it private. People just assumed that she was a deranged redhead in a hospital johnny running everywhere.

She almost made it to what looked like the door to the stairs when, from the ceiling jumped down a man she was all too familiar with. "Agent Barton," she said with a smirk. He had his arrow ready aiming at her chest. "I only have one functional leg, are you really gonna do that to me?" He scoffed, not replying. It was hard to like this woman if she constantly talked to him like that. "It wouldn't be a fair fight."

Steve had made it around the corner, the two agents seemingly trapping the spy as the monkey in monkey-in-the-middle. Barton lowered his arrow, only realizing it was a big mistake after the woman kicked him in the groin with her good leg. Steve tried to restrain her from behind, but she elbowed him right at his wound, causing him to fall back. She kicked Barton in the head and ran as both were stunned, resuming her mission to get to the stairs. She was running down the steps, wincing as she put pressure on the injured leg. Moments later, reaching the second floor, men in tactical suits, probably ten from above her and another ten from below, were armed and aiming at her. She sighed knowing that if she weren't injured there might be a sliver of chance at escape, but with her now bleeding stomach, her sutures breaking from the surgical site, she surrendered. She decided to do a stupid thing and grab one of the guns of the guy closest to her and he ended up firing upward to one of the men above her. She ended up getting a kick to the stomach, falling down the stairs causing her more pain and additional contusions she would have gladly lived without.

"Enough!" They heard. The other man wasn't harmed, though he did feel a shooting pain where the bullets collided with the kevlar underneath his gear. Fury emerged from the sea of black clothes. "Take her back to the infirmary," he said sternly. Natasha looked up and met the only eye she could, considering that he had only one.

The moment she was back on the bed, she found herself bound. "I'm not trying to patronize, but this could have been avoided had you just stayed here," Steve said. She didn't respond, her movements restricted so she couldn't even eat. The soldier asked if she needed help but she remained silent.

She didn't speak for the entire week.

"Hi, Red," a man said to her. She had only been exposed to Steve and sometimes Clint, but not him. She didn't appreciate his arrogant smile. "I made this chamber thing so you can't escape even if you wanted to, and let me tell ya when I say I've been so excited to meet you," he said. She didn't care for it. "You're not a prisoner in this, I just wanted to let you know. Spangles almost beat me up into making this. So if you need to leave or have an emergency or do whatever else, you just call out JARVIS." He said. She didn't really understand what he was asking her to do. "Go ahead," he said, but she remained silent. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "JARVIS, I'm hungry."

"I can call someone up to fix you a sandwich, sir," an english accent resonated around the room. Natasha was impressed, but didn't want to give him the satisfaction, so she remained neutral.

"See?" He said, his smile wide. "You can ask him anything. JARVIS, name all the women of Spice Girls."

The woman didn't know who they were but the AI started spitting out names that she was sure were accurate. The technology of Americans were unparalleled, so she tabled that thought to write on a piece of paper for her superiors to know. "Anyways," the man said. "I really hope you take our side soon. You could even be a part of the Avengers."

Natasha glared. She would have to die before she joined an American superhero team. Tony laughed at her response and left her with additional resources and commands for the AI. Though its programming was limitless, he still explained how to use him as a television or a calling device (which was pointless because outside contact was restricted for her). He had thought of everything.

There was a knock on her door and she cursed the fact that the AI could do almost everything except conjure up a weapon for her. "Natasha," a soft voice made it through as the door opened. The voice was familiar to a man who she was almost tired of hearing. He wouldn't shut up for the whole week that she was here.

The spy didn't stand from her bed, staring up at the ceiling as Steve opened the door to let himself in when she didn't protest. "How are you feeling?" He asked. Still, no response. She had given everyone the cold shoulder for the past week, only speaking to say 'thank you' or nod to the doctor that examined her. "Uhm, I'm heading to get food if you wanna come. Or I could bring you some up here, I'd imagine that your wounds would still hurt."

She sighed and sat up, her face remaining still despite the pain that shot up on her side from the sudden movement. "I'm currently planning a way to escape this place just to let you know."

He smiled. "I'd be more concerned if you weren't."

Natasha almost smirked at herself, playing the role perfectly. Too eager to join SHIELD would be suspicious. She might actually stage another escape, as long as it doesn't result in more bruises than necessary like last time.

"But my invite was serious," he said in a soft voice. He didn't have his sling on anymore, letting the spy know that his super soldier serum probably helped with that in some form or another.

She just nodded and Steve took that as a polite no. He said goodbye and left the woman to think in her room again.

The Americans had been extremely generous. She had plenty of clothes, either plain t-shirts or tactical ones that she deduced were for training or some sort. The bed was large, possibly fitting two people. She had her own bathroom and there was a desk with a tablet on it, which she was free to use anytime she wanted to. She had the clearance of a Level One agent, Steve said, which was already more of a clearance than his boss wanted to give her. She felt like she should have joined him to get food, but any sort of familiarity she would attempt to make with anyone would be skeptical considering that it has only been a week. She would keep the silent ruse for a couple more months.

"Am I allowed to go to the gym, JARVIS?" She asked, feeling silly as she talked to the air.

"Yes, Miss Natasha. You have access to two, the combat training mats and the weight room. I am afraid that you have not yet been cleared to enter the shooting range or the weapons chambers," the voice said.

She had casted out the agents for two months. Her leg and her side have healed almost to its max and she was tired of the lack of physical activity. Before her leg healed, she did some upper-body calisthenics despite the doctor restricting her from strenuous activity. She popped her side stitches again about halfway through healing because she was restless and decided to do abdominal exercises, the least she could do considering that she couldn't do anything else but yoga to stay in shape.

"Okay, I'd like to go to combat," she said, not really fully understanding what that place is supposed to be like because she's still getting herself used to American jargon. She assumed it was some space for martial arts—which she found out was correct after JARVIS had called a Level Four agent to escort her to the room. It looked like a whole acre of matted space, with some places hoisted up in scaffolds and a big boxing ring in the center. There were heavy bags, noticing Steve literally blow one of them off their chains, some reflexive bags and other types of equipment like jump ropes, agility ladders, a peg board, and a salmon ladder, which she's all absolutely excited to try.

"Natasha, hey," she heard, seeing the soldier walk towards her, his face sweaty and perspiration dripping down his tank top and arms. "Haven't seen you here."

She gave him a strained smile. "I've been feeling suffocated in the room." He nodded, though a little disappointed because he had gone to her plenty of times to get her out of there and she had always rejected him. He realized that she needed to get out on her own accord so he hadn't attempted it since a couple of weeks ago.

"Not that I'm giving you a job or anything, but some of the people here need some humbling if you want to spar with them," he whispered to her, making her genuinely laugh. The fact that he already thought highly of her skills already said that he was the smartest man she's ever met.

There were some men fighting on one of the scaffolds, a combination of wrestling and…some other martial art she can't really describe. It just looked like they were playing on the floor. "Who's that?" She asked Steve, pointing at a man.

"Those are one of the guys that needs humbling," he chuckled. "Agent Rumlow."

She nodded and walked over to the training square, her arms crossing over her chest as she waited for them to finish. It seemed that Rumlow won whatever game they were playing and before he left the stage to grab water, his eyes landed on her, bulging out like a fish. "You're too hot to be in a place like this," he said with a smirk, jumping down from the raised mat with swagger. She had to control herself from rolling her eyes.

"Let's go," she said.

"Hmm, go where?" He asked, trying to be seductive. If only Natasha could throw up.

She didn't control the eye roll this time and got on top of the scaffold, waiting for him as she took up a stance. He hopped back on it, the smug grin still on his face. "I don't wanna hurt you," he said.

Natasha punched him on the nose without warning and when he was about to protest, she took his neck between her legs and spun, pinning him to the ground. She quickly grabbed a hold of his arm and when he tapped the floor, a signal that she did not know, she broke his limb. Rumlow screamed in pain and Steve ran up to them.

"What did you do?" Steve asked, alarmed as more people gathered around the fallen agent to assist him as he made his way to the medical bay.

She furrowed her eyebrows, confused. "We were sparring. I thought-"

"You're allowed to hurt his ego, but you're not allowed to actually hurt him," he said, frustrated as the woman stood up from her sitting position on the mat.

"Oh," she said, dumbfounded. She looked around the room and saw that some of the agents feared her (which she didn't really mind). There were some who didn't hear the commotion and were still sparring on the far side of the room. None of them were attempting to hurt each other despite throwing punches.

Steve realized what was going on and smiled. He relaxed and sighed. "We protect each other here. It's not a competition to see who outlasts the other. I don't know how training in Russia was, but we don't hurt anyone here. We challenge each other but we should learn when to pull our punches when against less-experienced competitors."

She nodded and went back into a stance. "Well, let's do this then," she challenged him.

Steve smiled and took the towel off that was hanging around his neck. He and Natasha were a perfect match, both of them gaining an audience as they went twenty minutes into fighting, without the other relenting. This was the kind of sparring that she was used to, Steve definitely worthy of her chaos. She tried to keep in mind to "pull her punches" (figuring out what it literally means after some context clues) and felt that the soldier was doing it, too.

At one point, Natasha thought she was going to win because she had him pinned only for him to use his strength and go a full 360 underneath her arms and release himself from her captivity. They went at it again, still with the same result. It only ended when Natasha found herself in a compromised position, just like how she had Rumlow, and though she knew Steve wasn't going to break her arm, she was still conditioned that he might because of how it was in the KGB. She closed her eyes waiting for the pain, but instead was released immediately. The way her face guarded itself in anticipation of a broken arm didn't go unnoticed to Steve. "You do this when you submit," he said, putting two fingers together and tapping her arm. "Or you can just tap the mat. That just means that you're in a losing position and you 'tap out'," he said with a smile. She nodded, realizing that that was what Rumlow had done to her, but she didn't know what it meant and continued on with the practice that she had back in Russia.

There were claps everywhere as everyone in the room had gathered to watch them. Natasha didn't know why but she went with it. The crowd dissipated when the captain scolded them to get back to work.

The agent that escorted Natasha to the training room was waiting for her at the door like her own personal guard. She walked back to her room to shower and a knock resounded on her door. She had a towel around her body, still wet from the water. She opened it with complete disregard for what she looked like because it never mattered back where she came from. Steve looked at her and instantly turned red, unable to make eye contact because of her lack of clothes.

"I'm—uh, I'm gonna go grab lunch. You should come with," he said. It was noticeable how he went from gently asking her if she wanted to eat lunch to sensitively suggesting that she should. It was a big difference in how he viewed their relationship, essentially forcing her to eat with him because he wanted her to come out and get to know everyone, not just him. It was an achievement of trust that she was proud to have instilled, knowing that it's only been two months.

She nodded her head at him and kept the door open as she went over to the wardrobe and stripped herself of the towel, not knowing that there was a heteronormative social norm of remaining clothed in the presence of the opposite sex. Steve instantly looked the other way, seeing her bare back for a split second, off guard. He closed the door to give herself some privacy, embarrassed that she had given him the opportunity to see that.

She went to open the door and realized that it was locked. "JARVIS, Steve is outside the door. We're going to go eat," she said to the AI.

"My apologies," he said as the computer unlocked the door for her. She looked at Steve who beckoned for her to come with him.

After three months, Fury had given her clearance to the shooting range and weapons chamber. She didn't do much except watch as Steve overlooked his trainees run around a maze, playing what seemed to be a simulated operation. She stood behind him, the Level Four agent who escorted her staying at the door for security.

"Fury finally let you in?" He asked without turning behind him to see if it was her. Somehow he just knew.

"Yeah, I just wanted to see what this was like," she said, watching as the agents shot blank cartridges at cardboard cut-outs. Steve nodded and remained silent as he intently watched each recruit, looking at the way they moved and the way they paced, as well as how they handled each situation.

Steve pressed a button. "Good job, everyone," he said, Natasha deducing that the button made it so he could speak into the microphone and the agents at the bottom could hear him. "Wanna do a run-through?" He asked with a challenging smile.

She almost scoffed. "You know that I can do that by myself, right?"

He laughed. "Well, go ahead then," he said. "Sully," he said to the agent as he gestured for her to come with him, entering a narrow staircase that led them down to the shooting chamber where the maze stood.

"These fire blanks, but they also shoot out a mark so we'll know where you hit your targets," said the agent as he handed her a rifle. "This also shoots blanks, but that's only if you run out in your rifle," he said, giving her a handgun that she could holster in her thigh.

"What do you mean run out?" She asked, her brows furrowing in question.

"Captain sometimes keeps us in there as long as he wants and we just have to keep firing at the hostiles. I don't know what he's going to make you do, but we've learned to carry extra. He failed us one time, because we didn't have enough. Oh, and the cut-outs fire paint at you, so if you don't shoot in time, they'll get you and that would be a failure."

She nodded, hearing a voice over the speakers. "You ready Romanoff?" He asked. She had disclosed her last name to them a week ago, her real one translated into American. "What level are you playing?"

She smirked. "Give me your hardest one," she said as she saw the soldier nod. The trainees that had been in the room a few minutes before gathered around up at the same viewing area that Steve was in.

"Suit yourself," he said with a smirk, knowing that she'll succeed.

Natasha walked into the maze, seeing a cut-out pop up to her left and was about to shoot until she realized that it was a civilian. Every time one propped up she made correct assessments, shooting at the perpetrators and holding out on the civilians. She ended up running out of ammo on the rifle, just as Agent Sullivan had expected her to. She grabbed her handgun and continued with the maze, also running out of ammo for that, too. She could sense Steve smirking at the balcony, thinking that he had her cornered with the lack of weapons, but Natasha ended up physically dodging the perpetrator ink and would kick or punch them down. She realized that she was getting tired of the combat so she climbed the maze wall to get out of it and steal Sullivan's gun on his thigh. He was about to grab her, but she managed to hop back over the wall again.

"It's okay, Sully," Steve said, watching as Natasha put literal bullets in the cut-outs, almost laughing at her dedication.

"Is she allowed to do that?" One trainee whispered to another who just shrugged.

"I guess so," he responded as all of them watched in awe.

There was a ring in the chamber that let Natasha know that she was done. "Not bad," said the soldier as Natasha smiled and shook her head. She saw Steve walk out of the viewing room to meet her at the lower chamber so she decided to walk her way out of the maze. One of the trainees didn't realize that the mic was on.

"I heard that she was a KGB operative. Remember the Black Widow?," said a woman, the voice resonating through the speakers. Agent Sullivan started going through the maze trying to find the woman because she wasn't allowed the weapon, but he didn't know where she was, struggling to make his way out of the never-ending loop. There was only one way in and out of it so he had to literally go through trial and error to find her.

"She's good but," said the woman over the speaker. "She's never gonna be enough. She's a Russian spy, she has no place here."

_"You have no place in the world, Natalia," said Madame B. Natasha remembers a gun in her hand stuck in a stalemate across her best friend, Vanya. "What are you going to do? Let others dictate the way that you move? Make this your place!" And then she remembers seeing Vanya's trembling fingers on her own trigger, whoever pulled it first would win, and Natasha saw her almost do it so her reflexes made her shoot first, the bullet going through Vanya's throat and falling lifeless on the ground._

"Natasha!" Yelled a familiar voice. It was Steve hopping over the wall and propping himself up there to find where she was. He was running on top of the barricades, sprinting to her and she didn't know why until she realized the shattered glass. Natasha had shot the trainee through the window, a bullet penetrating her gut. Before Steve could get to her, she was on the ground, being pinned by Agent Sullivan and her hands held behind her back.

She knew about seven different ways to get out of this position, but didn't relent, staying as her cheek met the dirty maze floor.

"What did she do?" Fury said as he found himself back at the viewing room of the operating table.

"I don't know," Steve said.

"How did she even get the weapon?" He asked sternly.

The soldier sighed. "She snatched it from Agent Sully. We were going through the Maze Ops and she found a creative way to get new ammo so I okayed it an-"

"You sanctioned it?" The man was gritting through his teeth as he stared at the young woman on the table.

"I didn't think that she would shoot anyone," he said softly.

"She's a KGB spy, Rogers," he said. "She's programmed to literally hate anyone who isn't Russian."

"Yeah, but I think there was a trigger it..."

"I don't care," Fury said straightly. "If Agent Kali Vries doesn't survive this, your assignment with Natasha Romanoff will be terminated." He was going to protest when the man stared at the soldier. "There is a life at stake here, Captain. You cannot risk being ignorant any longer."

Steve's face hardened. "Yes, sir," he said as he stood straight up, tense and upset before leaving the viewing room.

Natasha was back in confinement of her room, JARVIS reprogrammed to retract her weapons and shooting range clearance. There were now two people involved in escorting her if she needed some place to be.  _Way to make progress, Natalia._  She told herself, but then realized that this minor setback further authenticates her lack of allegiance to S.H.I.E.L.D. Sure, one person became a casualty, but she didn't really mind. A part of her itched because she didn't think that she would need to kill anyone for this mission, but then realized that the woman was insulting her so maybe she deserved it anyway. But she did evaluate everything she was doing, going too far would lead her into a high-security prison, away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and all its intel, but playing too safe is still suspicious in this current time frame.

There was a knock on the door, one she was familiar with. Steve emerged as he entered and closed it behind him.

"How is she?" She asked him, putting on the correct level of empathy even though she doesn't feel it in the slightest bit.

He shook his head, putting his hands in his jean pockets. "She didn't make it," he said.

And then Natasha realized that even if she didn't feel empathy, there was still a different feeling within her. Almost sympathetic—sad that it happened the way it did. That was the first time she ever felt anything like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please secure self and fasten seatbelt for lots of angst. Spread some commentary, it's my favorite food. I'll have some kudos for dessert, please. Thanks for readin'. :)


	2. salutations bobbi

**Now _. Natasha's Fifth Year._ **

"Tash, I need support down here," she heard Clint say over the comm in her ear.

"Gimme a minute," she said, a bullet from her Glock colliding with a man's chest. She was forced to use a crowbar to hit someone in the head afterwards before running across the ship to get to the archer.

"You're a lousy teammate," said Clint, though she knew it was tinged with blithe. She heard the "pffft" of an arrow leaving his bow as she neared his position.

"You're the one that needs help, loser," she said, smirking as she scaled the ship's poles, running up to where he placed his vantage point. She saw that he had some hostiles nearing him, making it hard to target the gunmen below because he would be preoccupied with people launching blows at him. Even worse, people  _shooting_  at him. She busied herself taking down the men hurrying up the steps so he could continue launching arrows at the perpetrators on the lower level, where Steve and Bobbi fought men in their tactical suits.

"You two better get it together," they heard in their earpieces, Steve grunting as he let go of his shield to ricochet off three hostiles.

"Why are these idiots so lame?" Bobbi said through the earpiece.

"Us or the lousy hotshots we're fighting who can't seem to land a bullet and coincidingly, therefore unsurprisingly, don't find me funny?" Clint asked, forming a small smirk.

"I don't know, but you're not helping you case," she bit back. She hit someone with her stave; the fight was too easy so the woman couldn't help but get cocky. She was met with a magazine to the back of the head from an undetected hostile, who Steve subdued shortly after. A faint "thanks" escape her as the whole group finished their infiltration.

They managed to get food at a New York burger joint an hour after the assignment in the middle of the Atlantic. Steve asked if they could get lunch and Natasha rolled her eyes at the proposal, partly because _getting lunch_ had become her and the soldier's "thing".

"All I'm saying is..." Clint started, a piece of lettuce flying out of his mouth as he spoke through his gluttony. "There was never a debate."

"You're  _not_  the best superhero, Clint," Bobbi sniped, sipping her lemonade. Natasha and Steve watched the two in amazement. It was a rather strange dynamic, Fury putting a hothead with another hothead. They had been partners for about a year now, and the insults were unrelenting. Sure, the partnership wasn't longer than Steve and Natasha who had been with each other for about four years, the spy working with him right after she was cleared and officially labeled a successful defector--but still impressive, nonetheless. Her ruse was working fantastically, but the relationships she was building were surely taking a toll on her own sanity.

"The Hulk," Natasha chimed, a french fry making its way to her mouth.

"Bruce is great but his intelligence is at like ten percent when he's green," Clint said, trying to defend himself as the better.

"That's not any different from you when you're just…you," Bobbi said with a smirk.

The Russian sent a look to the soldier, asking herself silently when the two were going to sleep together and hoping that Steve would catch on. Unexceptionally, he didn't.

She stared at the sight in front of her, Bobbi sitting next to her at the booth and the two men crowding their bench with their wide statures (mostly Steve's). Their seating arrangements could have been better fixed but they weren't always known for planning, despite their characters being able to work together so fluidly.

Their group had been coined as the current best strike team of the agency. It was put together by colliding two partnerships, one that Fury was sure was going to thrive. He wasn't wrong. Mockingbird was introduced to Clint six months ago and they worked for a ninety percent success rate by themselves. Then the quad formed and they found themselves invincible against everyone. Everyone. Fury didn't budge but Natasha swore that she could see excitement in his eyes. His features were always the same, so no one could distinguish it, but she just  _felt_  it.

Her and Bobbi had hit it off, hearing Clint even call them "best friends". She wasn't sure either of them called each other that, just because they weren't the type to even forge that kind of relationship. Even so, this was the closest she'd been to any woman aside from the girls she spent her time around in the Red Room. They sparred together, yelled at Stark to make them better _dual stick things_  (as the genius called them, Natasha questioning if he deserved such a title with that stupid name for a weapon), constantly berated the men they were around (except Steve, Natasha just couldn't bring herself to, but Bobbi took the load on that for her), got milkshakes sometimes immediately after fighting some bad guys, and they always complemented each other on the field whenever they were in each's vicinity. So, all-in-all, anyone could say they really were the typical best friends. Bobbi also understood her passing needs for isolation because she knew all the things she went through. And Natasha knew that Bobbi needed the seclusion, too. Thus starting a friendship of mutual understanding and Natasha felt the excitement at being able to actually have friends without fearing that she would be forced to kill them later by the Red Room. There were no contingencies to the relationships she built with the people around her. It was a breath of fresh air, and very depressing because she was a year away from needing to give it all up.

Natasha had gotten close to Clint, as well. They probably had one of the closest relationships that he's ever had, she knew, but he didn't want to admit it. He went from the assassin tasked to kill her to having a friendship with her and somehow she understood that he was just preserving whatever dignity he had left over. Though he didn't know her past the way Bobbi did (Fury knew far more about her but that notion's annulled given that it was more of a one-sided affair and she was coaxed and investigated on; she's pegged him for a stalker but Steve constantly chastises her for it—considering she's  _also_  a spy), Clint's unwavering patience of getting to know her not by reading her file, but by actually taking the time to ask, proved that they shared greater sentiment than she and Bobbi did.

Clint let her in his life after he went through an accident that forced them both closer (with her over-the-top attempt at making him feel better and making him trust her--birthed first from her desire to advance the mission, then later turning into genuine want to  _make_ him trust her for who she was and not the act of a Russian defect) and then even further after he broke up with his girlfriend (so, he's had a lot of girlfriends because he sleeps with any available woman of legal age, but this was a  _girlfriend_  girlfriend, Natasha's surmised, seeing how torn he was afterwards). He cried like a baby in the most readily available arms of the  _only_  woman he would never think to sleep with. Cherry was the absolute worst to him anyway, and Natasha had grown protective of her boys, which she never saw coming. It wasn't that she was territorial, she just felt so connected to them that she realized she was compromising herself on this mission. It was full-blown knowledge at this point and she can't bring herself to change any of it. She could't disconnect from them and if she did, and abandoned the assignment, there was no doubt that Bruskin would find them and kill them in front of her. Or something else just as macabre. Because if they couldn't take down America, then they'd just take down her world for failing theirs.

Did her superiors really think they could immerse her in this culture and expect her to remain acclimated with theirs? She didn't know, but she was pretty upset with them and herself for being thrown into the depths of what she thought would be American propaganda but really was just… _American_ , pure patriotism. They weren't weak the way she was told. They just  _cared_  a lot. She'd never been exposed to that in the KGB. She was pretty sure that the whole "caring" thing was a _human_ thing and transcended all borders, but she'd never been blessed with enough contact with every day people or bodies who, through and through, genuinely cared about her. Because of that she wasn't able to experience it now. She was also sure that her late parents were those kinds of people, but…they're  _late_ , so she wouldn't really know.

There's a sense of individualism and freedom to an American entity that she's come to reap the benefits from. The collective society of the Soviets made it very difficult to think of herself only, unless it was in survival situations—in moments of "kill or be killed". She liked being by herself because that's how she was raised, but the "autonomy of leaving her apartment, getting on a motorcycle, going on a cross-country road trip whenever she wanted to" kind of vibe was comforting. And then the relationships, true ones, duping these lovely personalities into caring for her almost hurt more than that one time she was tortured with a hot stick.

Clint, who she knew she bickered with because they have a history of disliking each other, genuinely loved her like a sibling and, as a spy, she was so very aware of that. His heart was on his sleeve. His dick was constantly out, too, but digress she did. He was so warm of a person, always stuck in S.H.I.E.L.D. vents (almost getting his head chopped off by Bobbi when he popped himself out of the ceiling one time), always joking, never taking things seriously at the worst times, but honestly always cherishing the people around him, especially Natasha. She's noticed how he tries to make her feel better about the world. He would always yell at Steve to make her  _solyanka_ , a Russian soup (because he can't cook so he delegated that responsibility), and, after he returned from a mission in Volgograd, he brought her home some authentic Russian vodka. He made sure she never missed a part of Mother Russia whenever he can, and Natasha's never felt that kind of security before. His authenticity and sensitivity to her insulation in America were unparalleled as she's come to look at him as a protector. It wasn't that she needed one, but she definitely felt warmth and safety in his hands. He understood that despite renouncing her past, she still loved the greatest parts of Russia.

He always asked her what the best parts of the nation were. He grew angry sometimes (most times) when she told him about her youth. Clint's temperament was always tested whenever she would talk about her hardships, really telling about how much he cared for her. He always made sure that she didn't feel alone. And for the first time in her world, she didn't--not with these three people (and Fury, but she'd never admit it) in her life constantly reminding her that she had someone.

And then there was Steve.  _Don't even get me started on Steve._

"Think Fury would kill us if we're late to the debriefing?" Bobbi asked as Clint went through his second whopper.

"Yeah," Clint said, licking his fingers, a conviction that contradicted his words. Bobbi nodded, but continued with her fries. Fury never scared any of them.

Steve was just the kind of guy to have utmost respect for anyone (like, including cold-blooded murderers like her, Natasha's realized), that he was the first one to speak up about the gravity of their notions. "We should head back," he said, sitting rigid and upright as he finished the last of his food, cleaning his plate of three servings.

"It's nice having that one punctual person on the team," Natasha said with a smirk. He shrugged, he didn't really take that as a bad thing.

So, given the orders of their captain, Clint rode clutched behind Bobbi in a motorcycle with a milkshake in his hand because he wasn't finished with his gorging upon the soldier's insistence on leaving (and he forced her to drive his own bike just so he could drink the damn thing). Natasha and Steve were driving her own, the three of them plaguing the streets of New York like road signs and traffic laws didn't exist. Steve made sure to be the only safe one while still keeping up with the rampage of his teammates' motorcycles.

"I asked for a quiet infiltration," Fury said, his arms crossed as he watched from a monitor helicopters surrounding the ship they had raided just hours before.

"You try getting punched and not making a sound," Bobbi said, twirling in her swivel chair. "It was their fault they couldn't keep their mouths shut."

Fury glared at her. He glared at everyone. There was never really a moment in his life when he  _didn't_  glare. Natasha sometimes felt that he was named "Fury" by fate.

"We got the job done, sir," Steve said, the only other person standing up aside from the director. He held his hands on the buckle of his waistband, his stance so  _not_  at ease despite Eyepatch literally telling him "at ease, soldier" every ten minutes. He also seemed to be the only person Fury took seriously, because he's the only one who demanded it with his personality.

Everyone seated around the table were always serious about their assignments but they definitely didn't have sticks up their asses. Fury and Steve were just super compatible in that sense, Bobbi always asked the soldier when he was going to propose. The soldier and the director definitely had their hostile moments (as Natasha remembers from her early S.H.I.E.L.D. days), but they were always the only two who got along when it came to tactical matters.

They all walked out of the room, unscratched by Fury's malicious debriefing because Steve took the responsibility, as always. He was the captain, he never really minded. "Jazz band and open bar," Bobbi said as she stepped out of the command station beside Steve.

"What?" he asked, stiffly walking…because that's just such a  _Steve_  thing. A  _soldier_ thing. His shoulders would solidify themselves like concrete with how rigid and tense he always was.

"When you two get married," the woman said with a smirk. "I want a jazz band and an open bar."

Natasha and Clint held in their laughter behind the two as Steve shook his head, diverting from their path to head to the locker room. Clint went straight to his motorcycle to head home and Bobbi and Natasha fell in conversation in the locker room.

"I saw your batons," said Bobbi as she grabbed her battle staves from her back. "They have fucking _charge_."

Natasha laughed and did the same with her own gauntlets so she could slip out of her catsuit. "What about them?" She smirked.

"Uh…" Bobbi unzipped her black and white regalia, mirroring the woman as they got into civilian clothes. "I  _want_  one. Change my codename to jellyfish."

Natasha chuckled and smiled. "You have wings, Bob."

"Yeah, but," Bobbi feigned a frown. "I wanna zap some people."

"Yell at Stark," the other spy replied as both of them laughed.

They grabbed their duffels and headed out of the lockers, until Natasha stopped in her tracks. "Shoot. Forgot my phone. See ya tomorrow?"

Bobbi nodded. "If you don't it's because I'm chewing Stark's ear off for not giving me electric _dual stick things_."

The Russian laughed and walked backwards until she found herself back at the stairs. She smirked as she walked into a locker room, similar to where she and the other had just left, but different in that its contents were certainly not for women.

"Hey, soldier," she grinned, dropping her bag as she walked over to the half-naked man who was idly sitting on the bench. He looked like he hadn't moved in the last ten minutes, caught in a trance.

"Hey, Nat," he whispered, looking straight at the lockers instead of meeting her eyes.

"You okay?" She leaned on the containers, her arms crossed and looking for a reason in his face to justify his reverie.

"Yeah, just…" He sighed, standing up as he removed his pants in front of her, his boxers the same shade of blue as his uniform. The other woman couldn't help but smirk. "Mission was hard. That's all."

"I know how you feel about them, Steve. Hydra's a bitch," she said, inching closer to him, her palms meeting his chest as she lightly shoved him onto the lockers. It couldn't have been done on her own accord considering that he was pure muscle and was planted on the ground. He consented to the touch by letting her control him.

He nodded at her remark, losing all the apprehension he had just seconds before. "They're not very nice."

She chuckled, her hands moving all over his bare torso. Okay, so she did say " _don't get me started on Steve"_. Because this…this was an unexpected relationship.

It wasn't even a relationship. She had to remind herself of that. They were just friends.

She was a friend who was currently landing kisses on his neck, her own self radiating heat and seething with wetness at the sounds that he made. "N-nat…" He always said that nickname like he owned it. And he kind of did, because no one else called her Nat. Tash and 'Tasha were reserved for Clint and Bobbi. He was the only one allowed to speak that sobriquet and, somehow, it was a marking of his territory. Not that Steve owned her, but him being the only one allowed to say her name that way was surely tinged with possessiveness that Natasha wouldn't dare complain about.

Her hands moved around him as she squeezed his butt, sending a laugh out of his throat and his own hands making it to her neck so he could control the direction of her lips. And that would be on his own, engulfing her in a passionate contact. Their lips haven't met since a couple of weeks ago and they both acted like they were trying to make up for lost time. The partners found this way to be the most optimal means to release libido and neither had refuted the conditions of this relationship for the sake of keeping it. Things could get awkward if they acknowledged it, but they definitely talked about some things to make this arrangement so smooth-sailing. So, for a whole year, they've just been doing each other on the side. Secretly.

There were parameters to their… _friendship_ they have established. No one ever stayed the night. Neither talked about personal things in the midst of it, staying impartial and afraid to cross that line for fear that it becomes something more. Not that neither of them wanted to (Natasha constantly had to deny it), it would just get complicated. Especially for Natasha. That would be  _very_  complicated. She didn't even plan on seducing him, but it just happened that one day in her apartment (it wasn't even actually hers then, she had yet to sign the lease), and then it happened again a year later and after that it kind of just kept happening…again and again. And again. To the point where booty calls were unspoken and late-night rendezvous became a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of arrangement.

Neither of them could complain. The way that Natasha's hand slipped in his drawers, the feeling of her skin against the rushing blood against his pants, sent a pretty loud groan out of his lips. She met his mouth with hers to try to silence him, but the way that her hand slowly moved in repetition proved her suppressive efforts fruitless. His hand travelled up and down her torso, his movements and mannerisms familiar to her, reminiscent of the last fifty (probably more--she called them rabbits once) times they were in this position. The way he palmed her chest, sending a gasp out of her, surely intensified the blood flow she felt in her grasp. It wasn't like he was trying to hide it anyway, his wanton affections for her have been established fifty ( _probably mor_ e) times already, way beyond feeling vulnerable at this moment. He wasn't trying to supplant a different notion in her head anyway, as he jutted his hips forward to try to find some contact despite there being  _a lot_  of contact at the current situation. He couldn't possibly get any closer with her hand on his cock.

She smirked at his subconscious movements, her lips trailing his jaw, then his neck, then the valley of his chest, leaving small pecks before using her tongue to lick that line that separated one pec from the other. Louder moans, she got. Then his abs. Oh, how she loved the six frames. If anyone knew Steve for what he was, his physique was almost definitely the first thing they were familiarized with. Even if he was wearing a shirt. His face was cute, too, but Natasha wanted to eat him for many reasons beyond the way his face looked. She placed a kiss on every protrusion on his stomach, using the same technique she did with his chest as her tongue swiped the crevasses of his figure. The lively notes leaving his throat weren't new, but still sounded like the sweetest things she could ever hear.

"Hmmm,  _fuck_ , Natasha." And the expletives began, a sign that he really couldn't take anymore of what she was giving him and needed more or something different, which she's learned from the fifty (definitely more) other times. It was all the more reason to tease him. She'd revel in his few remarks of profanity because outside of this arrangement, she would never hear it unless consequences were dire. She was hurt one time, and he heard him say "dammit" over the earpiece. That was the only other occurrence of him cussing outside the bedroom situations. So…she made sure to continue what she's doing for as long as she could just so she could hear some more. "Fuck, _please_." And who knew the Captain America could be controlled to the point where he felt the need to plead? And she knew what he was asking for, but decided to keep her pants on. She was in the mood for a more _hands-on_ —or, _mouth-on_ , rather—experience at the moment.

She used her teeth to tug at the waist of his shorts, making sure to look up at him and make eye contact with the movement. She didn't think he could get any harder than he did. The boxers didn't need to be shoved all the way down at his ankles as her own desire usurped her patience, gathering him in her mouth projecting the perfect kind of sounds (chokes, moans, etc. and all that jazz that she knew he would love to hear), emitting the right amount of suction, and moving in correct tandem with her hand.

It didn't take long for his high to reach its release, his quickening pants telling her that he was close. And when his eyes closed and greater sounds of his moans reverberated through the locker room walls, she knew it a second before she tasted it. She followed with a few more licks to clean him up before she took his boxers in her hands to bring it back up his waist, tapping his clothed butt that he was too busy panting past to chuckle at. He grabbed her face and met his mouth with hers again (it surprised Natasha the first time, because men weren't the kind to taste their own diffusions—it was one of the more lovely things about him; a small act that told so much).

Steve breathed into her one last time before separating them. "Feeling better?" she asked, a genuine smile on her face. She didn't even know she was trying to ease him from his earlier anxieties about the mission until after. Sometimes she really just enjoyed giving him blowjobs, but today had an extra latent purpose with her service.

He nodded, giving her one last peck before stepping into a new pair of pants. They never went home together, or gave each other rides to their respective houses. But that night, after they had both gone home, Steve made sure to cross two boroughs to return the favor in her own bedroom. He went back home after she gave him cold and stale leftover pizza.

 

"How good of a spy are you?" Clint asked. He was clad in shorts that were too bright for his liking. They were also printed with way too many green palm leaves, too many for his own taste. He met the woman's pace through the wooden floors.

She gave him a pointed look, her chiffon cover-up not leaving much to the imagination as her blue bikini shined through. Her weaved hat's brim was so large that Clint questioned if it was heavy. Women wear those kinds of sun hats all the time, but still, they have the tendency to deceive through their pains for the sake of fashion. He tried heels once--hated them after five minutes. "How good of an archer are you?" she returned.

"Adequate," he said with a shrug, a smile forming at a sentiment that he created to humble himself, but the grin betraying him by saying that he was definitely underselling his skills. She knew that, obviously. Anyone who knew Clint knew that.

"Don't be an idiot," she said, her forearms crossed and settled on the bar that was now in front of them, allowing her to lean forward and showcase a little bit of her chest to the bartender. Clint didn't miss the second the man behind the counter looked at her  _heart_  before meeting her eyes, hoping that he didn't embarrass himself. At least he tried his best not to be deliberate about it, Clint would rather have that over someone who was openly ogling at his woman. Not really  _his_  woman, but his woman for this assignment anyway. He fiddled at the ring on his left hand, the bling setting a new feeling in his digit that he didn't feel comfortable with if he needed to use his bow and arrow. Despite that, he kind of liked the idea. But he also liked being a bachelor, so he washed the thought of marriage in his head. Bobbi didn't seem like the marrying kind. Not that he'd marry Bobbi. Not that he  _didn't_  want to marry Bobbi. Not that…scratch that whole thing altogether. Bobbi, who?

She asked for a chardonnay. He got a beer because he was a basic, old-fashioned man. They sat at the bar and looked at the ocean. "We sure are spending all of our time in boats, nowadays," he said, sipping his alcohol.

"Ship, babe," she corrected, her eyes rolling and trying very hard not to blow her cover by being extremely annoyed at her stupid, newly-wedded husband.

"There's a difference?"

She shook it off. Getting in an argument over water vehicles wasn't on the agenda. "Hun, are we still going to the show tonight?" She asked, one hand feeling up his arm for good measure.

Two people made their way to the bar. The woman was in a dazzling sundress and a same-sized sun hat. Clint really wanted to know if it was heavy (but really just thinking that as a distraction from Bobbi's unsolicited hand on his tricep). "I'll take a Quintessa," she said, ordering the most expensive cabernet on the cruise. The other guy followed suit with some French-sounding champagne that Clint just  _knew_  was the most expensive beverage on the boat—ship.

The woman's red-filled glass hit the translucent fizzing blond of the man's, clinking before he placed a peck on her cheek and wrapped his arm around her as they stared at the sea. Clint really wished he could be that natural with Bobbi, cursing Fury in his head for choosing him for this mission. Curse Fury, curse Bobbi, and _curse_ Bobbi's hand.

"Yeah, I heard she was wonderful," the archer replied to her earlier question. He was never a music show-goer. He didn't like dressing in suits because they always felt either too big or too tight, the collar suffocated him if he wore a neck or bowtie and the cuffs of his dress shirt strangled his wrists. He was never the claustrophobic kind (he loved vents) but suits are just too often wrong for him. He didn't like anything that weren't sweatpants and tee shirts.

"Are you both talking about Diana Krall?" The woman had an english accent. Her and her husband looked at them with soft smiles, content in each other's arm. Clint looked over at Bobbi because they never agreed on being from the UK. He guessed Natasha made that cover on the fly.

"Yeah," the blonde spy smiled. "I'm forcing this one to come with." She pointed at Clint with a playful roll of his eyes.

"Oh," the redhead on the other side of the bar laughed. "He's actually the one making me go. Kind of a jazz nerd." Natasha pointed at Steve who had a crooked smile, and nodded accordingly.

Clint realized that he was  _just_  as uncomfortable about this spy thing as he was. Thank god he wasn't alone. Curse Natasha for making this easier on Steve by  _not_ having her hand on his arm. 

(Little did he know that Steve's reception to such would be very different from his own).

The archer was uncharacteristically quiet when Fury was briefing him on this mission. Steve was silent because that's who he was, but he felt the same level of unease as him. Neither of them felt comfortable about undergoing the operation, because pretending to be the husbands of beautiful women weren't exactly on the job description.

Clint didn't really like that he was forced into these ugly shorts, remembering what he was wearing when he looked over and saw that Steve was in a regular, solid, navy blue board shorts. Bobbi insisted in him wearing the print one, and because she knew more about espionage than he did, went along with the ruse.

"Where are you from?" Bobbi asked nonchalantly, sipping her wine as she engaged in conversation with Natasha. Neither he or Steve knew what to do so both stayed idle near their wives.

"Wales," the redhead said with a smile. Then they bonded over them both being teachers, Natasha being a dance instructor (not necessarily  _teacher_ , but close enough to Bobbi's cover) and Bobbi an advanced placement biology teacher. The other woman asked what "advanced placement" meant and they engaged in a whole boring discussion about the United States education curriculum. Clint wanted to stab his ears with an arrow. He was already partially deaf, but he actually wished for that hearing device Tony and Bruce put in his head to malfunction, hopefully simultaneously electrocute him in the process so he goes unconscious through this operation. How could these two be so good at making stupid and uninteresting discussion about the  _American school system_? And even further, Natasha launched into her own dissertation about the difference between Russian ballet and the  _tip-toe_  dance in the UK and the US.

Clint couldn't handle the bore so he kissed Bobbi on the cheek and went to the shuffleboards (he can't believe he kissed Bobbi on the cheek). Steve followed suit. Both of them felt a little bare now that they weren't in the vicinity of their respective master spies, Steve feeling a hollow of regret in his stomach now that he was flying into this espionage blind. Clint looked like he felt the same. "Stephen," Steve decided to start, extending a hand for him to shake.

"Clay," he responded. And they talked about American barbecue and fourth of July. God, was this boring. They played shuffleboard with senior citizens as their two women looked at them from afar, talking about them endearingly.

Natasha found herself believing most of the things she says. The biography about Steve _—Steph's_  character wasn't that different from his true self, so her utterance were genuine things she knew. "He's a soldier. Doesn't get out much so I pushed him to come to this cruise," she said. "Always so tense. I told him to come and experience some relaxing days before he goes back to his troops."

Bobbi nodded. "What does he do?"

"Works for the American base down in Virginia," she said. "I followed him to the United States about five years ago. Been married ever since."

"That's so sweet," Bobbi's eyes glossed in feigning fondness. "Clay just works whenever he can. Builds houses. Contract work. Of the like. Kinda forced him to marry me because we've been together for six years without him popping the question." Natasha laughed and shook her head.

"He was probably makin' sure you're the right one," Natasha said. She wholeheartedly believed that, understanding that Clint has yet to ask Bobbi out because he didn't want to make her just another one of the women he played around with. Clint probably didn't even know that, but the reason that he's made so few advances towards her was because he saw her differently. He would never admit that to himself, or anyone else for that matter, but Natasha's known him long enough to where if he's bordering cowardice, there's probably a reason. "Steph and I were dancing around feelings for awhile. Just because I was far and he was rarely ever up in Wales. We just had a lot of distance." Complete truth. She almost knocked herself out with how authentic her claims were coming out to be. It wasn't the physical distance that she thought about, but the emotional one. The one where both of them kept each other at bay, keeping a platonic relationship outside of a meaningless dalliance. For the first time, Natasha second-guessed herself. And for the first time, she felt upset. Over what? She didn't know.

They continued talking about their covers until the sun set in the horizon, letting the women know that it was probably time to get dressed for the jazz concert. They called over their husbands who, surprisingly, enveloped themselves in their disguises, engaging in boring conversation that neither of the boys could stand. But still, one slip in their façade and their "wives" and the whole team could be in danger.

They walked down to their rooms and realized (totally knew it already) that their cabins were next to each other and that they shared a balcony. Oh, how fate could be so kind.

Not too kind, though, apparently to Steve and Natasha's sex life.

Natasha was in their bed, typing through a computer as she talked about their assignment. They had debugged the room and re-bugged it with buffers so no one could hear their conversation, if anyone was planning to listen in using some kind of electronic device. Still, that precaution doesn't extend to anyone who put their ear on the door or tried to amplify their speech using a drinking glass through the wall. "Jacques Duquesne's attending," Natasha said as Steve slipped out of the bathroom, terrycloth covering his lower half as a smaller towel was wrapped behind his neck, his hand using it to fiddle with his ear. The woman had hacked into the guest list for the show and was having a conversation via secure broadband messaging with Bobbi on the other side of the wall, her fingers typing fast.

"What time's the performance?" Steve asked, setting a knee on the bed as he used a towel to dry his hair.

"Seven," she said. "And then we're gonna go get dinner with Barb and Clay."

He nodded as he looked at the clock in their cabin. "How long will it take you to get ready?"

"Thirty minutes," she said without looking up from the computer. "Why?"

He smirked crawling from the edge of the bed to near the redhead. He placed soft, suggestive kisses on her neck, trying to tear her away from the screen. He thought he wasn't successful until he heard a soft sound pool out of her throat. "Hm, we have neighbors," she whispered, trying to continue her typing. She mentally cursed herself when she sent a message to Bobbi that had a typo in it. She never does typos.

He continued trailing kisses up her neck. "Oh?" he said faintly, but the deep gruff in his voice told her all about his desire.

"Mhm…" She bit her lip as she continued the virtual conversation with the blonde spy.

"We have about twenty minutes before you need to get ready to make it in time," Steve whispered in her ear, the chills traveling with the territories that he touched. She didn't respond as he crawled around her, his towel still covering his lower half as he settled behind her, her sitting between his legs. He placed kisses on the back of her neck, his hands moving from her hips then caressing her very visible thigh. Riding her dress up one more inch would show Steve exactly what he wanted.

"They might hear us," Natasha said, stopping her typing as she tilted her head to the side, exposing her cheek for Steve to plant a soft kiss on. Then her head moved up, opening up as much of her neck as she could.

"That means you have to be quiet then," he said against her ear. His hands were softly massaging her legs, those movements alone enough to send her through the edge.

She let out a moan as Steve sucked on a part of her neck, separating just as quickly as he had bitten it in fear that it would leave a mark. His hand moved inside her thigh, her dress covering their movements, but Natasha feeling exactly where he was directing them. "Hmm, Steve."

His hand stopped abruptly as his mouth made it near her ear. "That's not my name."

So Captain America had a role play kink. Natasha would've never guessed (and she's learned that he's had some surprising kinks throughout the year).

His fingers resumed dancing around her skin, until he felt the wetness through her fabric. Her whole body spasmed at the touch. "Do you like that Mrs. Rogers?" He whispered seductively in her ear. She couldn't control the gasp and the sound that followed shortly after at his speak. She didn't think she would like that sound rolling off his tongue as much as she did. It worried her, sending a small hint of panic in her currently very occupied brain, but quickly dissipating as she felt his finger make it inside her, not bothering to remove the fabric that was there by pushing it to the side to give him the exposure he needed.

"Mhm…" She nodded frantically in response as her hand grasped at Steve's wrist, his thumb pulsing on her nerves. " _Fuck_ ," she whispered, followed by a moan. The way his other hand covered her mouth to stifle her tones made her even wetter than she thought. She might've exclaimed something in Russian against his palm at some point because his fingers moved quicker in arousal.

It was so disappointing, really, that it had to be short-lived. A knock resonated through the door that forced them both apart. Steve had to pull his fingers out, his digits wet. Natasha noticed and smiled sheepishly, not embarrassed but she sure had a tinge of red on her cheeks. The way Steve innocently— _innocently, like he knew it wouldn't turn me on_ —licked his fingers clean sent a cry out of Natasha's center. She was so aggravated at the person who was knocking, because she couldn't finish, that she almost flung the door open.

" _What?_ " she exclaimed the moment she opened it.

Clint stared at her in confusion. "Sorry," he said defensively as he gave her a small box. "Barb wanted me to give this to you."

She looked at him apologetically, taking the present from his hand. He walked back to his room confused at her silent tirade.

"Who was that?" Steve asked. He was getting dressed in slacks already, Natasha disappointed that this situation had to be postponed.

"Clay," she said, opening the box to pull out two earpieces. She realized that Bobbi had brought most of their gadgets in her own pack. Steve nodded as he grabbed the baby blue dress shirt hanging on the wardrobe. Natasha buttoned it for him as she placed a soft kiss on his lips. That kind of intimacy has never escaped her and Steve didn't seem to mind. They were playing their roles after all. She planted a kiss on his neck before buttoning up his collar. He stared at her, almost wanting to say something, but capturing her in a more heated kiss instead. It was long, passionate, longing, something that neither of them ever felt when they have sex. When they pulled away, they were both panting.

"You happy we went on this vacation?" Natasha asked, needing a confirmation more about their true selves and not their created personas. It was a question of "are you happy this is happening and we're given the right kind of environment to be with each other" formed in disguise.

Somehow, Steve caught what that meant. "Very," he whispered. He couldn't control setting another kiss on her lip before she left for the bathroom.

When she left the shower, she couldn't help but marvel at the way he looked in his suit. He was missing a jacket, refraining from wearing it because it might get too hot too soon and he didn't want his underarms to mark his shirt. And his physique—It wasn't that his shirt was too small, but his muscles definitely protruded out of them. He had his hair gelled. She'd never seen it that way and this was definitely a version of Stephen Rogers she wouldn't mind spending the night with. He looked at her innocently. Again. Innocence just shot up so much arousal in her, that she could barely contain it in but one swift look at the clock told her that she couldn't waste time. The fact that Steve was compromising her work, not only her  _fake_  work at S.H.I.E.L.D. but her real work with the KGB, induced some anxiety. The panic that rose through her in the middle of that short situation with Steve not long ago finally triggered the correct and attentive synapses in her brain. She was in full blown apprehension and she didn't know that it showed on her face until Steve looked at her with concern.

"You okay?" he worried. She had to shake it off and smile, hoping that he wouldn't see through her. Natasha could chastise herself at the distraction.

"Yeah," she smiled, though it didn't seem that he believed her. The fact that he was able to read her so easily now was nerve-wracking. She wasn't nervous about him seeing through her façade, playing double agent with Russia, but more anxious about him being able to read her like an open book. It's not about the secrets or the assignments—it was just  _her_. No one's capable enough to see through her and, even though they spent four years together, it was still crazy just how much he'd come to know her.

He nodded to appease her as he buttoned the cuffs of his shirt. He decided to hang out in the balcony for awhile, joining Clint as both of their women got ready for the jazz performance. Natasha and Bobbi came out simultaneously, like they planned it; Bobbi in a blue dress and Natasha in black, the redhead's leg playing peek-a-boo through the long slit that travelled all the way up her thigh. Bobbi was wearing a dress that showed her whole back. They just smirked at each other as their partners drooled.

Steve gulped and held out his arm. "M'lady," he said with a cheeky smile to which she rolled her eyes at. They headed to the theatre together, though Bobbi and Clint had to sit in the back of orchestra seats and the other pair in the back of the balcony, Natasha and Steve's noses bleeding at the sight—small seating details none of them overlooked so there were eyes everywhere for Duquesne.

Fury had rushed this operation. He sent a mid-coital page to Natasha and Steve and pushed Clint out of bed who begrudgingly complied after drinking black straight out of the kettle of his coffeemaker. Bobbi was sleeping peacefully and hopped out of bed so easily, like she was already awake, after getting the call.

_"I hate this guy," Clint said, following a groan. He had brought the kettle with him, unbeknownst to his own attention. It wasn't meant to serve a comical purpose, but that came with the territory—so tired was he that he didn't realize he brought four cups of coffee worth, and in its original pot nonetheless. He was sipping the roast as Fury briefed them on the mission._

_"You know him?" Steve asked, looking down at the physical copies of his dossier._

_"Yeah," he replied. "Carny—like me. Met at a tour once. Couldn't stand the guy. Full of himself," he said. He talked in partial sentences, enough for everyone to understand but also enough to show that his brain, still groggy, hadn't caught up with the motions yet._

_"Hmm…unlike anyone we know, I'm sure," Bobbi said to him with a smirk, an implication of his own hubris which he didn't catch. He didn't bite back, alarming the woman. Clint could honestly almost fall asleep, his head nearing the table sometimes with rather futile attempts to refrain from resting his face on it. Fury didn't mind (or didn't show that he did) when he finally set his cheek on the table to rest, his eyes fluttering to control the submission. It wasn't until the director dropped a heavy stack of papers on the platform, coinciding with a loud thump, when he jolted backwards in his chair and acted like he'd been awake the whole time._

_"I brought you here because Interpol pinged us about Duquesne's registration on the Seabourn Sojourn," he said, pulling up a photo of the cruise ship. "I don't really apologize for the short notice because this is your job. It leaves tomorrow morning and I need you on the jet to LA in an hour to get there and gather yourselves in time."_

_"Where's the ship heading?" Natasha asked, her elbow on the table as her fingers rested on her chin._

_"Australia," he said, getting nods from the three agents who were paying attention. "The money's the problem. He stole from a Federal Reserve truck, killed a few federal agents, and he's using the cruise as a way to smuggle it out of here." Fury pushed the large stack of papers to the center so they can all grab their respective files. "You're all married," Eyepatch said, seeing as both Steve and Clint perked their heads to make sure they heard it correctly, but the women remained rummaging through their biographies, unfazed._

_"Like..." Clint paused, trying to look for the right word. "Mormons." He most definitely could've used a better word, his brain still one step back from everything else._

_"No," Fury made a disgusted face. "Romanoff and Rogers. You and Morse. The usual pairs."_

_The men nodded, Clint oddly slow at grabbing the file because he wasn't sure about what he wanted it to be._

_"You have some freedom making covers, but I've given you the starters. Passports, identification, social security," he said to the women. "I rest assure that you know how to do espionage by now. Please teach these men how it works. And…" He sighed as he paused. "Try not to spend S.H.I.E.L.D.'s whole budget."_

_The women smirked at each other before dropping their facets to ask lots of questions. The men, however? Not so much, as if the archer's perpetual curiosities about literally every nonsensical thing were tamed. Clint spoke up after flipping through the six pages of his fake biography. "He could recognize me," he said, sounding desperate to get out of this assignment no matter how hard he tried to control it._

_The director shook his head. "That's why you're not making contact," he said. "You and Morse find the money. Romanoff and Rogers will handle the Swordsman." Clint's eyes looked like he had just wet himself. Fury shut off the opportunity for more questions, hurrying them into the quinjet to get to California._

So, sitting in the nosebleed balcony seats, Steve and Natasha peered at the mezzanine. All four of them had looked at all angles of the man's head for the past two days, staring at mug shots and candids taken from ten years ago to now, so they'll know him the moment they see him.

"I have eyes on Duquesne," said Bobbi. Clint saw him too and confirmed, putting the two other agents at ease atop the balcony. Steve absentmindedly set his hand on Natasha's bare thigh as a woman began playing the piano. She didn't brush it away and she didn't know why.

She remained alert the whole entire time, but the soldier looked like he was genuinely enjoying himself. She'd known he'd always been into jazz, but his interest seemed to say that he was more into it than he let on. She now realized why he brought her to a speakeasy that one time and seemed more acclimated than a modern New Yorker. Their earpieces pinged as Clint spoke in it. "He's wearing a tuxedo. Pretentious if you ask me."

Natasha tried to hold in a laugh, imagining Bobbi covertly pinch him as they all hear a slight grunt of pain in the comm. Steve was paying attention now, but upon realizing it wasn't pertinent, returned to basking in the performance.

The yellow lights dimmed at the top of the theater, just enough to shine a glow on his face. She'd never seen him look so content before, his back no longer tense, seeing his shoulders curve down because they weren't sternly formed in a straight line. His finger tapped on her thigh, in tandem with the smooth beat of music, and she realized that he hadn't noticed the sovereign possessiveness of his own hand. He probably didn't even feel his fingers move and caress her leg—it seemed to be an established idiosyncrasy, like his hand belonged there and had memorized to do what he was doing, even if this was only the first time it ever happened. His sentient grasp came second-nature to his head—a hind-brain mechanism. She smiled at that, at how comfortable he felt at the moment. She poised her thigh so as to not move, afraid that a small spasm would render him attentive to what he was doing and snap his hand away and apologize like the gentleman he was. She wanted it to continue, the softness of his palm almost burning a hole through her quad because of the intensity she felt at the delicate touch. There wasn't a sexual entendre, just an intimacy that she craved, a contentment that she'd never felt. Natasha felt happy at this moment in time.

If only it lasted.

Steve's hand separated from her leg the moment that the show finished. She mirrored him as he excitedly left his seat among others to give an ovation. She didn't really know how the performer was because she'd spent the whole evening looking at him watching and listening to the performer. That was entertainment on its own.

"He's exiting through the west gate," Bobbi said in their ears, snapping Natasha out of her imposing reverie and interlocking fingers with Steve, filing out the way everyone else was and moving swiftly but smoothly through the crowd of people. "He's with a brunette. Red dress, white nails, blue heels. Terrible combination if you ask me."

"I agree," Natasha said. The men didn't really understand the feminine speak, but went along with it.

"Just look for someone with terrible fashion taste," Bobbi replied with a small laugh.

Natasha smirked, her lips pursing in  _that_ way. The way that Steve wanted to kiss them every time she did so. "Copy that."

The spy and the soldier went through a sea of people, Natasha calmly and inconspicuously trying to look for Duquesne's head and pompous tuxedo, as well as the woman that Bobbi had described. She was thankful for the added four inches of her heels, able to see above some (very few, still, actually) people. Steve was trying his best to compose himself and look like he  _wasn't_  looking for anyone. His attempt at being as good as he can at espionage was almost endearing to Natasha. She smiled when a glint appeared in his eyes. "My four o'clock," he said. They had made it to the lido deck, lights twinkling around the ship as stars flooded their view of the atmosphere. A familiar hum of jazz played, different from the concert that they had just attended. This one was more lively, Steve almost wanting to dance but stopping because he'd never done so. This reminded Natasha of a speakeasy. She wouldn't be thinking such so often had Steve not introduced the wonders of the Prohibition Era to her.

Natasha ordered the same wines from the same bartender and grabbed their drinks. Both kept sight of the perpetrator. When he went to the floor with his terribly-dressed partner, the spy let out a hand that silently asked Steve to enter the dance floor with him. He looked at the offering, then back at her eyes, his own pair apprehensive at the invite. "Come on, Steph," she smiled sincerely, a sweetness that he's only used to whenever they work as an undercover couple.

She saw him gulp, almost giggling at his nervousness. Natasha decided not to do anything too complicated as they softly swayed. "Mockingbird," she whispered against the soldier's shoulder, so no one could read her lips if they tried. "His cabin is 527," she said. "Hacked into the server earlier. He's checked in as Jackson Duke, the woman wasn't listed in his registration. I have eyes on them so you have time to check out whatever he's hiding in there." She heard an affirmative and some shuffling, probably from her and Clint pacing to Deck 5.

Duquesne and his woman stopped and headed to the bar, and for a moment, Steve thought that their dancing would cease too, but Natasha turned around against him, her back to his front so they both had a view of their contact. His breath hitched his throat, their proximity sending down a warm feeling through all of him, not just his midsection. The closeness was just so… _nice_ , he felt. He was hugging her from behind, her hands holding onto his, but one of them separated to caress his arm, fingers traveling from his forearm to his tricep, then back down to his wrist. She did this for awhile as her head leaned against his chest. She turned her head, her mouth placed perfectly onto his neck. He let out a sharp breath as she kissed him there. She wasn't even watching Duquesne.

She didn't relent, her eyes closed as she sent another kiss against his skin.

"Nat," he said softly. She let out a hum, her hand stopping with the motions against his clothed arm, instead putting them back on top of his hand and interlocking their fingers from the back of his hand. She stood straight up now, Steve's chin resting on her shoulder. He tried to stop himself from placing a kiss on her exposed collarbone, but couldn't. There wasn't even a need to release sexual tension between them. It just felt sweet and  _right_  to do this, and Natasha told herself that it was for the sake of the cover. Steve did, too.

"Negative," Clint said through their comms. "His cabin is squeaky clean."

"Hmm," Natasha hummed in rumination. "Time to find out the name of his girlfriend."

She removed herself from Steve's grasp, but kept one of each of their hands together so she could pull him back at the bar. She smirked as she sat next to Duquesne, making sure to catch his attention first before calling over the bartender. "I'd like another Quintessa and a Krug Grand Cuvée for my husband," she said, giving him the empty wine glasses. Jacques looked over in amazement.

Steve smiled and went along with the ruse, standing between her stool and the perp's. "Hun, that's like our fourth for the night."

"It's not like our assets are gonna struggle over a few glasses of wine, love," she said, tone pure in a Welsh accent, laughing a little as she placed a chaste kiss on his lips. He was taken aback, but only for a moment as they continued talking about how  _rich_  they were.

Jacques made an attempt to touch elbows with Steve. "Oh, sorry, man," he said with a smile.

Steve chuckled and Natasha didn't know if it was over the man's pathetic attempt of making contact or if the laugh was for cover. "Don't worry 'bout it."

"Y'all not from around here?" he asked, pointing at the woman with a wine glass between his hands. They were in the middle of the Pacific, so "here" was a trivial spec to what the pair of agents assumed was America.

Natasha perked a brow up almost seductively, then innocently smiled. "I'm not, but the hubby is."

"Jack," he said, his hand open for a handshake that the pair emphatically returned.

"Steph," Steve said with a small smile. "This is my wife, Natalie."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am," he said. Somehow, that title leaving anyone else's mouth but Steve's almost made her gag. It just sounded more predatory instead of gentlemanly the way her partner says it. "My girlfriend, Mandy," he replied likewise.

"What do you guys do?" he asked, trying to pry their professions out of them. Typical.

"I'm just trainer back in Virginia," he said humbly. Jacques was waiting for something a little bit more extravagant after hearing them say they ordered, respectively, two-hundred dollars worth of wine… _four_  times.

"I work at a ballet studio there," she said in thick english inflections. He didn't ask further, but he did ask for their last name. She then proceeded to tell him that her father was an aristocrat, nonchalantly and with humility. "You'll probably end up just finding my great great grandfather, Ivan Rushman, if you googled or something," she said cheekily. He knew he'd look it up later, her already having set up a counter-measure as a quick engine search of Natalie Rushman Rogers would bring him to a billionaire dynasty of patricians in the late eighteen-hundreds. Obviously fake, but boy was she glad to have been graced with the ease of building a Wikipedia page.

When Natasha and Steve entered back into their room, they got changed and decided to lounge on the balcony, Steve drawing something on a piece of paper with Natasha's leg sprawled on top of his lap. She sat next to him on the couch, perusing the computer for the ship's register. The other couple made their way out there as well.

"Enjoyed the deck?" Bobbi asked, wearing only a terrycloth robe. Clint looked uncomfortable (not in the worst way) at the sight as he took a seat on one of the lounge chairs.

"We did," the redhead smiled. "Really sorry we skipped out on dinner with you both."

Bobbi laughed. "Oh, don't worry about it," she smirked. "It went by quick with how much this guy needed,  _oh_ -so badly to get back to the room." She sent him a wink and both Steve and Natasha laughed at his manifesting redness despite the blonde's facetiousness.

"You're as much a part of that problem as I was," he said at an attempt to return the playful banter--Bobbi rolling her eyes.

Natasha turned the computer towards her, showing them a schematic of the ship. She pointed at a room that said 604, with the name  _Miranda Brandt_  listed next to it. The other spy nodded as she went back inside to get dressed. Clint was invited back in Natasha and Steve's room where they spoke openly because of the electronic buffers. "He's as much of an asshole as I remembered him," he said. Clint and Bobbi were intently listening in on their conversation with Jacques over the comm just to be alert if the other two needed back-up.

Bobbi joined their gossip shortly and after awhile of unhindered debriefing, they left to turn in for the night.

Steve made sure that Natasha was taken care of until the sun went up. Taken care of in...cosmic and nail-scratching-his-back kind of way. That was the first time either of them spent the night together after having sex. It was a new feeling, the woman adjusting to the warmth and security of his grasp first thing in the morning. She almost wanted to kiss him, but didn't know if that was far too intimate for their arrangement, and instead decided to run her hand up his jaw to feel his growing stubble.

She had to stop this. Seducing the soldier wasn't a part of the plan. She realized that she cared too much for him to be a part of the fallout in a year's time.

 

There was a loud banging on the glass balcony door. Natasha groaned and left the bed, making sure she was wearing her own clothes instead of Steve's. She opened the curtain to see Clint willfully hitting his knuckles on the glass, even if he knew it would wake up the whole deck. She stood with her arms crossed and waited for him to stop, refusing to open the sliding door.

 _Breakfast?!,_ he gestured excitedly in American Sign Language. Clint was never excited about the mornings. Maybe he'd already had his four cups of coffee for the day.

She sighed and nodded her head, still keeping the transparent barrier between them. He was about to leave when he did a double-take and looked at the shirtless soldier on the bed. She had to compose herself for his incoming admonitions.

He looked at Steve then back at Natasha. Then, after repeating the action two more times for theatrics, yelled, "Did you two fuck?!"

She rolled her eyes and finally opened the door. "No, we did not," she shouted in a loud whisper, afraid to wake the sleeping soldier and relinquishing the further attention Clint might attract from the other decks if he kept up with the nuisance. She realized that she was doing a better job at lying to Clint than controlling her emotions about her KGB assignment. Considering that she got in bed with an American, in a situation that wasn't necessary for the case, she had already failed at that part of the espionage. "He sleeps without a shirt on."

He nodded, but kept a glare. Then he dropped it altogether and smiled. "Alright. But…" He looked at Steve again. "If y'all ever sleep toge--"

"We won't," she hurried. More lies came out of her mouth, ones she knew he'll forgive her for if there ever came a time that he finds out about her and Steve.

"But if you do--"

"We won't."

"I'm just say--"

"Clint." She gave him a pointed look, almost feeling guilty at accusing him for implying certain things could happen that he was most definitely  _correct_  about.

He put his arms up in surrender and chuckled. "Okay, okay," he said, before walking to his own cabin.

She closed the door and brought the curtains back. She realized that she was going to release her inhibitions and straddled Steve, placing an extremely passionate kiss on his immobile lips, a kiss filled with longing that seemed to be beyond sexual. 

She was about to separate when she felt him reciprocating the kiss. For awhile they were in that position until she severed their connection. "Not a bad way to wake up," he said in that groggy manner induced by the mornings (a cute tone of voice Natasha wouldn't mind hearing more often). He was always an early-riser, but last night's endeavors probably had an effect on his body clock.

"I can tell," she replied with a smirk, grinding against him.

"Hmm, Nat," he said, his hips spasming up to get more contact.

And then she laughed and got off of him, sending waves of shock and disbelief in his demeanor. "We're gonna be late for breakfast with Clay and Barb." She winked and headed to the bathroom. She heard a groan and a faint "I hate you" come from their bedroom.

They were in the breakfast room, engaging in regular conversation that their personas would, when Clint noticed Jacques enter the vicinity. "That's our cue to go," he said, grabbing Bobbi with him who obliged. For a moment it was just Steve and Natasha. He placed a lock of hair behind her ear and gave her a small kiss on the cheek (she didn't know if it was for show or for real...and if it was for real then she'll make sure to have that awkward conversation with him absolutely never). She inadvertently blushed at the connection, then shifted her gaze when Jacques decided to help himself by sitting across them with Mandy by his side.

"We're heading to Deck 5," Bobbi said in their ears, which neither of the pair responded to because of their company.

"Hi, Jack," Natasha said enthusiastically, letting the other two partners listening know what their situation was.

The contact basically tried to shove his life into Natasha's and Steve's, probing them with questions in the most comfortable way he can. Natasha had to give him credit, if she wasn't a spy who was constantly paranoid and if she didn't know who he actually was, she might have just surrendered to his charm. His cons would so work had they not been S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They let him keep up his character, even spilling some things for bait, like what their cabin number was and of the like.

"Gotcha," they heard in their comms. That couldn't have been any other but Clint, with the way his enthusiasm grazed their ears. He really hated this Jacques guy.

Natasha was laughing until she caught sight of a man in the corner of her eye. She didn't know if she saw him correctly and stopped herself from whipping her head around to get a good look at his face. She zoned out when the man purposefully walked to a space that gave her a full view of him.

"Nat, babe?" she heard Steve say. Somehow she couldn't get out of the trance. She knew that Jacques had asked her a question, but she was preoccupied with the man standing far across the room, his features recognizable enough for Natasha to understand.

Vasily Karpov was in her midst, a subordinate to Alexi Bruskin, but a superior to her. The Soviet Union was keeping tabs on her. For how long? She didn't know. But she knew that it's been awhile, and they just decided that now was the right time for them to show her that they were watching her. Somehow, she felt no sense of security—absolutely no sense of safety coming from her motherland. The only thing she was filled with was dread.

After snatching her attention back to the conversation with Duquesne, Steve sent her a worried look. She excused herself to the bathroom to wash her face, because maybe she didn’t actually see him. Maybe she was just hallucinating.

It wasn’t until she looked in the mirror and saw Karpov’s figure, his eyes staring daggers into her own. She held a hand up to make him pause, a movement that would've been seen as disrespectful considering that she was a subordinate. Moving like the sign language he'd learned (at an attempt to get closer to Clint when he went deaf years ago), she gestured for the tech in her ear and eased her old handler. She took the earpiece out and turned it off.

Silence engulfed them, until he grew impatient and gave her the worst news she was sure she never wanted to hear. “We need everything now,” he said. "Alexi is impatient for the new republic."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, i’ve always been uncomfortable writing through time hops even if they’re extremely necessary (like super uber duper pertinent) to the narrative. it’s because the years skipped have so much potential for character development and furthering relationship dynamics and just so useful for plot and only the author really knows what happens but can’t write it and i want you folks to know but also can’t which is why it itches and hurts to do time hops *sharp inhale*. 
> 
> there’s so much to tell in that gap that i just can’t imagine leaving up to the imagination because the vagueness kills me as a writer even if i have a vision for what happens in that limbo story period. however, given nat’s six-year time frame of completing this mission (in which i have a plan for every single year, but currently struggling to put it all together coherently because i _suck_ ) i knew that there just has to be gaps because it would be absotutely boring to just write about her going pew pew with guns and bzzt bzzt with widow bites and steve launching his shield and punching bad guys on missions. 
> 
> _so_ , i’ve decided to thoroughly confuse you (i did say i suck, right?) by going back and forth and doing the wrong thing by going _not_ chronologically (despite the thousands of years worth of stories being told in chronological order because that’s why they’re freakin’ called stories, but i digress) because authors are sadists and it sounds fun. hopefully by doing this wrong(?) thing, i’m somehow doing the right(?) thing. and also i’m stupid— **so** —the story’s going to be following a then-and-now narrative (ode to george lucas who is inarguably _not_ sucky and _maybe_ (probably) not that much of a sadist) in order for _all of us_ —not just my perverse sense of storytelling _mwahaha_ —to better understand the nature of nat’s progressive switch in loyalties (spoiler but not really because c’mon, y’all so that coming; if not, you're on timeout until i post the next chap) and also to see her and steve’s eventual relationship unfold (also spoiler but not because we _all_ know, and if still not, you're just grounded altogether) through the years. but this will only happen for a few chapters (exact number still pending) because i know that trying to follow a story that goes all over the place will be like a buttcheek on a stick reading. thanks for bearing with me and my barbarous genealogic tale :) 


	3. hi, clint (in sign language)

**Then. Natasha's** _**2nd Year** _

She was getting absolutely berated by the man. Natasha didn't know what the correct responses were. Just recently, she was met with a rather explosive and extremely animated Nick Fury. That was the first time they exchanged words.

"You killed my agent," he said, his face unchanging, immobile and unfazed by her reception.

Natasha was kept in isolation for three months before this.

She wanted to apologize, to scream that she was sorry. She wasn't entirely contrite, but she did feel bad at the gut shot. Would she have done it again given the same chance? Maybe. But it's different to control herself now that she was given absolute autonomy. Yeah, she was confined to her room with her own sherpas to escort her to literally anywhere. After the Vries incident, she had been granted maximum surveillance. JARVIS didn't need to call over an agent because one should already be standing outside her door. The difference was the independence. No one told her to do anything here. She wasn't forced to wake up at dawn to run miles around the perimeter. She wasn't shaken awake in the middle of the night to run an emergency assignment. Natasha certainly wasn't told what to eat or how  _often_  she should eat. It was a whole new experience that, to anyone would have been freeing, but to her was harvesting paranoia. She wasn't sure what the correct thing to do was and she's being forced to think about her decisions at every moment. It's not like the Red Room didn't do that same, telling her to kill whomever, but at least they were  _telling_  her. No one was speaking a damn thing here other than Rogers constantly asking her to eat lunch or to invite her sparring (which she's been banned from, but he's been sneaking her out with a little help from JARVIS).

The man with the eyepatch was standing in front of her in a windowless room, though there was a one-way mirror in front of her. She sat with her hands lax on her lap, a steel table set as a barrier between her and Fury.

She remembered him from her brief attempt at an escape many months ago, but he never put credence in actually showing his face to her. She didn't know why. Maybe he was planning to kick her out sooner or later, butter her up before throwing her to the wolves. Or he probably just didn't care. She decided with the latter as the man stood an imposing frame, demanding respect that she cordially obliged to. She was doing her best to not seem like a threat. Shooting someone dead was crossing the line for this agency, something she didn't know, and she's learned that the only way for her to convince them of continuing to allow her in this place was to abide by very weak law that put stock on human life. They don't even inflict pain on others, for god's sake. How do these people continue to do work if they aren't exposed to true conditions when exercising? Surely that guy whose arm she broke is doing perfectly fine now, so why do the Americans rely largely on instinct and believing in themselves when they can actually simulate true environment threats? It was stupid. Using blank cartridges to shoot at cardboard cut-outs was stupid. They have enough tactical vests to go around and go at it at a shooting range or something.

This was all incredibly new. Restrictions made it difficult to really try to piece together how she can manipulate her way to the top because she wasn't sure how to navigate through them. This wasn't going to be as easy as she'd first believed.

So she opted for the kinder method. The weaker, American method. "I apologize," she said.

Somehow that didn't sound right to his ears because his hands met the table with a loud thud of skin-to-metal. "She's dead."

She didn't know what to say so she stared at him in the eyes—eye. She did her best to make her demeanor look somber, and she's not one to falter at acting.

"Tell me, Romanoff," he softened, but not enough, combining his rigidity with a stern look. "Why are you here?"

She paused to think. "You captured me."

He nodded, an answer he expected, she realized. "Do you want to be here?"

She didn't want to seem too eager. That question was the perfect entrance at their world of espionage. So she simply nodded her head.

"Then everything you know about Russia goes," he said, his face turning into a frown again.

"I'm sorry?" This was also an expected part. The people she knew were going to die. Not that that's the way S.H.I.E.L.D. works, but she wholeheartedly believed that any information she discloses will result in the decimation of facilities, of intel, and surely of the people.

_"You will reveal Madame B and the Red Room," Alexi told her. He had his hand on either side of her shoulders, a very unfamiliar feeling that she decided to settle into. "You will divulge intelligence of the Black Widows; the Wolf Spiders. All those operations will be gone."_

_"What will they do when they're captured?"_

_Alexi smiled, putting a strand of fiery hair behind an ear. "They will not be captured. They will be killed, Natalia. After you give them all the information you have, the Americans will not spare a life because they believe that they'll be getting it all. They will think that there will no longer be anything else they need from everyone else. And that is a sacrifice we must make for our land. Because there is no victory without sacrifice." She had to swallow what tasted like bile in her throat. Her comrades, Anya, Sophia, Yelena, the ones left that she'd come to tolerate. There's always a looming hostility among all the girls, but they still fought with one purpose. They all worked for the betterment of their nation. She'd learned to build a neutral relationship with them and knowing they will be assassinated when the time came didn't sit as well as she would think within her. "None of this is easy."_

_He gave her a list of contacts to memorize. They were all low level KGB recruits, ones that he would expect to rise above the ranks in six years' time. Then there were the proletariats of Department X, the workers and teachers like Madame B. The students. The countless helpers around the facility that kept the children fed and put together. They will all die the moment that Natasha gives up their location. KGB will disintegrate at her hands, in which Alexi has already begun creating an underground army that will take it over once it falls. He didn't disclose all of that information to Natalia, just that the operation existed. It let her know that he had a failsafe if she went wrong at some point. It made sense that he wasn't going to put out all of his pawns at this long fight against the western world. Bruskin is expecting a full-blown attack on their republic, and he's putting her at the forefront, the catalyst to the Soviet Union's demise. He's starting from the ground-up, planning to make America vulnerable at the thought that they've defeated the Russians. All because of one girl. The empire of the United States will fall all because of one deadly ballerina, and along with it: Russia. Natalia will be responsible for destroying the two strongest military sovereignties in the whole world._

"You have to tell us everything you know about the KGB," Fury said. "You want to be a part of us? Then you're gonna have to hang up everything that the Soviet Union has to offer."

She nodded, feeling nervous. She rarely ever gets wary in interrogations, but there's a fear that she might share too much or too few. Either one and this whole operation collapses. Her Russian comrades would die for nothing. "Department X is an agency that oversees projects on creating super soldiers—like your Captain America. I'm from there. They work for the KGB in an underground operation so no one outside of top clearance even knows about it. They have one project happening right now and it's called the Red Room. It's where I'm from. They call us the Black Widow operation and the boys are under the Wolf Spider project. They steal children from orphanages so they could raise them to be assassins against the west and I turned out to be the most successful one. There's a few other spies, but they work for the main KGB compound now." She disclosed their names, every single person that Bruskin told her to.

"Alexei Shostakov," she said, her heart sinking at the name. "He's a pilot for the Soviet Army, and he works as the liaison between the KGB and the military. He knows everything there is to know about both branches."

"Yelena Belova. A black widow. Almost as good as me. She's their lead asset now that I'm gone. I'm sure they're preparing her for a mission to find me. Find her and you'll find the rest of the Red Room."

"Niko Constantin, a wolf spider. He was initially branded as a mistake. He was supposed to be neutralized because they couldn't control him, but they put him in cryostasis instead. If there's ever a threat to the Soviet Union, they'll unleash him. He's dangerous. Think of your Hulk and Captain America fused into one man, but lacking morality, is nothing but psychopathic, and has the avarice of a fascist dictator."

"Anton Vanko. His alias is Crimson Dynamo. I think your Iron Man went up against him a few times."

"Ilyana and Piotr Rasputin. They go by Magik and Colossus."

"Maximov twins. They're our covert diplomats for Bosnia and Herzegovina." That one hurt a lot.

"Wolfgang von Strucker. Oversees human subject research in the KGB's German outpost."

And then she started naming locations. "The Red Room is in Zelenograd." And she thought about the people who were going to die in them.

"Samara." Rasputinas.

"Chelyabinsk." Anton.

"Rügen." Von Strucker.

“Novi Grad.” Maybe the Maximovs weren't there. She couldn't take the risk of being wrong—of giving the Americans wrong intel. It would jeopardize everything she was working towards. But…she still hoped she was wrong. That maybe Wanda and Pietro were somewhere else. Bruskin specifically told her not to forget this location, one the twins frequented, almost as if they lived there—it's like Bruskin really wanted them dead. Natasha held in a choke.

She continued. "Derzhavinsk." Her dearest Alexei.

"Tumangang…"

She was interrupted by Fury. "You have bases in North Korea?"

She nodded. "Just that one. It's the closest city to the Russian border so a contract was made during negotiations between the communist republics."

Natasha never looked at death the way others do. All around her, people have the constant ability to die. Bruskin said that she was the Black Widow not just because of the spider, but of the capacity to build relationships then kill them. Widows, there's something about being the last one always left alive that Natasha didn't like. All of these people are going to die because of her. She should be okay with it because this is all for Russia. But she should also be okay with it even if it was for more frivolous causes. Because when has she cared about the death of others? Natasha's desensitization, years and years and  _years_  of killing is the reason why these things should be easy. Vanya didn't die just for her to continue being weak.

Despite how she's trained, the concept of sacrifices and death around her made her uneasy. She's never been attached to these people. She controlled wincing at every single name that contributed to Fury's checklist.

He was at ease now. It had been at least a couple of hours of her spilling the guts of Russia out. He sat on the edge of the table, his arms crossed and looking at her with…sympathy? She couldn't tell.

"What happens in the Red Room?" he asked. He noticed the way her features changed, how she grew strait-laced at the inquiry. Her face was dark and suddenly she was more tense than she had ever been since entering the compound.

Natasha disclosed everything that occured in the operation.

 

After a week, Fury thanked her. She just knew that everything she's told him as dissolved. Part of her wanted to cry, but she didn't have enough time as the man ordered her up to the command station. With no escort.

Literally.  _No_  escort. She didn't know what that could mean. She was surprised when she got up there and saw Steve Rogers and Clint Barton standing beside a large conference table.

"I'm sending you on recon," he said, looking up from the papers he was reading like Natasha knew what all of this meant. Well, she understood the concept of reconnaissance, but what the  _heck_  did this mean? He gave her a file and she knew that the only correct reaction was to open and read it. "You leave first thing in the morning on Thursday." And then he dismissed the two men, but asked Natasha to stay.

"Every single name you told us—and every single place…" he started. He prompted a visual amalgamation of the projects she knew all too well. The screen was split with the other half containing the names and locations she had told with him, her heart sinking at the red strikethroughs in all of them. "They've been successfully infiltrated. Without your help, without telling us their weakest points, we wouldn't have been able to disband the most dangerous operations being run on the planet." She almost wanted to yell—wanted to tell him that he was a hypocrite. Captain America existed. Without the human trials the US government had done, they wouldn't have him. The Soviets were just trying to do the same, so what made them any different or any  _worse_  than Fury's biases? Natasha knew she couldn't scream about it. She knew that she couldn't say anything about Russia anymore. Her opinions about her country needed to dissolve. She was American now.

"And…" He pulled up another file and slid it to her. "We have their whole entire dossier on you, among the other things they failed to report. The abuses. Everything. It's all in there. No one knows about that except for the clandestine agent that I sent with the strike teams to put that together. And me." She nodded, though she didn't know why she was given the thing since she was, well…her. She knew everything in it already. "That's the only copy. I made sure to tell her to destroy any others. The KGB, Department X, the Russian military, if their sectors ever build again, they won't have any idea that you ever existed. It ensures your safety here. There's no electronic version, either. You get to do what you want with it. Destroy it. Keep it. Or give it to me and tell me what you want me to do with it. It's your choice."

Natasha has been given many things in her life. The Red Room. Cool weapons. Red hair. Ballet slippers. Natasha's also had many things taken away from her. Her parents. Vanya. Sanity. One of the things that she was convinced of is that, the things that they took from her can't be given back. And yet here she was, being returned  _freedom_. She has a choice. For all of her life, the only thing that she's been exposed to were ultimatums, proposals accompanied with perfunctory choices, forcing her to pick the practical ones. Their orders have always been one-dimensional. Kill Vanya or die. Sterilize or die. Do this for Russia or die. It was always something or  _die_. And in a world of survival, in the world of the Red Room, that isn't a choice, it's exploitation. She remembered, in all her years of learning American patois, the situational lingo: catch-22. It was her reality, the only one she'd ever known.

So right now, she was given something that she's never thought could be possible. She felt something she didn't know she could feel. And that was decision—rather, judgment. And, man, was it hard.

Uprooting her cognizance of quagmires from the Red Room practice of not-having-a-choice, she decided, for once in her twenty years of living, the direction of her own life. "Burn it," she said, sliding the file across the table. He didn't say anything, nodding at her option. He pulled out a cigarette lighter and incinerated it in front of her.

And just like that, Natalia Ilianovna Romanova: gone. She didn't think that it was that easy, but the man in front of her sure made it seem that way. It was really supposed to be a symbol to let Fury know that she was on their side, but even she took is an opportunity to start on something new. Deep down in her heart she couldn't ever let that part of her go and she would never. Not when Bruskin is counting on her with the fate of the Soviet Union. She tried her best to ignore what just happened even if it occurred on her own accord and  _even_  if she made that choice consciously with the thought of erasing her past and putting it behind her. She's just going to keep denying that any of these decisions matter when she was working towards a goal that made all of them seem so nonsensical in the bigger picture.

She went on the mission afterwards. "Nice to see you, Red," she heard Clint say. He smirked at her as he put a glove on.

"I know you don't trust m…"

"We do," said another man. He was smiling sincerely at her. Steve Rogers should really learn how to be more leery of a person. She's surprised he's surviving in a world of constant deception. Anyhow, it made her job easier. All her friends…or at least, people she knew, were dead because of her. Now's the time to unleash some anger. The first phase of her job is done, and now it's onto gaining information.

"If we didn't, you wouldn't be here," said Clint. "Just…please don't get me killed."

She fought well, hearing Clint over the comms in the middle of subduing someone. "You don't look rusty at all," he said.

"I've had some practice," she replied.

Steve could only smile. "Hmm, I wonder how," Clint asked.

"Hawkeye, stay focused," Steve ordered getting a chuckle from the man. He silenced himself, but only until after they finished the assignment.

"I'm just saying, if you're gonna sneak out the assassin in the middle of the night for some late night punching, I'd like to be invited," Clint said as they rode the quinjet back to headquarters.

"Who said anything about that?" Steve asked, feigning perplexity as the archer spun an arrow between his fingers like it was a drumstick. He looked pointedly at the soldier.

Natasha had a lot of emotions.  _One_ : it was finally nice to get out of the building. She hadn't been granted the smell of trees since she'd been there. Because she wasn't just sequestered in her room, she was also secluded from the outside even more so after the incident when she went  _bang_  into a recruit's gut. The only thing she really saw were the views of New York from the twelfth floor of the compound. She didn't see much, just people bustling on the streets unaware that they're living among the largest, most covert, international agency in the world—oblivious to the existence of such at all. She saw the same skyscrapers (not like they'd move) every day. There was no change, no movement, unless it came from planes launching or landing at LaGuardia or helicopters setting on top of rooftops. There were no sounds either, keeping the acoustics of the outside world on the outside as Natasha sat in an extremely silent room. She would often ask JARVIS to play suites from Tchaikovsky or Rimsky-Korsakov's overtures of  _Scheherazade_ , just for the nostalgia it brought when she once performed as the youngest prima ballerina for the Mariinsky Ballet (after her handler, Vasily Karpov, went on a tirade against the Bolshoi for not giving her the principal spot in their theatre and irately removed her from their ensemble). That was only two years ago. She would dance the proverbial movements of the preamble to the performance most days, and other times when she was feeling particularly sad and needing distraction, would launch into the  _three and a half_  hours worth of all four acts of  _Scheherazade_ in her adequately spaced room. It wasn't like she was needed anywhere pertinent considering this was a prison cell. It felt good to not have responsibilities and have all the time in the world to do what she loved. Ballet was really the only thing that was there for her. And given the turmoils of her occupation, the list of people who were "there for her" weren't actually people. Because they weren't allowed to be. So, turning it into virtual or material things, the only  _objects_ that were "there for her" were the constant comfort ballet gave her and the freedom she would feel when walking around Russia, (even though the only time that happened was when she was on a mission; a manifestation of imprisonment in a more poetic definition).

 _Two_ : it felt good to actually fight. Given that this was a recon mission, they weren't supposed to run into anything large or even show themselves, but after Steve was put in a  _pickle_ , his contact getting suspicious with how many questions he was asking, Natasha was called in for some support. That involved her taking down a few men silently, which worked, so it wasn't like she even got into any full-blown fights. She got into none, actually. Every person she took down, she subdued with no noise, so they all went unconscious lacking belligerence at the demise they never saw coming in the first place. Despite the diluted experience, she was still thankful to finally get some action going. So Steve Rogers had snuck her out in the middle of the night sometimes to spar and punch some dummies, but nothing could ever compare to the real ones. They also confiscated her widow bites, but Fury said he was giving her better ones. He replaced the cuffs with batons and boy was she excited. She didn't need to use them now, controlling herself only with the necessary means to take down he unguarded men. She wasn't given guns either because they were only supposed to have "defensive" weapons.  _Tell that to your arrowman who_ thwocked _me twice and left considerable damage. Didn't feel defensive to me, but I digress_.

 _Three_ : the casualness of being with her men, Steve and Clint, brought her ease. She expected some hostility, especially from Clint given their history, but she was met with none. Steve had been kind to her the first time they met…well, the first time they were given a chance to speak in a more friendly environment (she's sure he didn't appreciate that shot to the shoulder at the Parliament). They hadn't all spoken much because she'd been isolated, and she assumed some awkwardness or testiness after being supplanted in a mission without ever having worked together. But again, nothing. Steve was happy, actually. Clint was content. The two boys constantly laughed from Clint always instigating humorful jabs at the soldier. They actually all worked pretty fluidly, more so than some strike teams who have been working together for awhile, Steve said. Natasha felt a sense of pride of being able to season herself into their pairing so quickly.

"I know I act like an idiot, Cap, but I'm not actually one," Clint said, the arrow still twirling in his hand. Natasha felt herself  _smile_ , not at his stupidity, but the interaction they're having in general. She remained quiet so as to not interrupt the entertaining banter between the two.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Steve said with a smirk, his back leaning against the wall of the jet, relaxed, and his hands holding onto the buckle of his utility belt.

"You really think Fury doesn't have footage of you sneaking Red out?" he asked. Natasha noticed the soldier straighten and get apprehensive. That sudden and noticeable change in his façade made Clint laugh out of his stomach. "Gotcha on that one. I'm sure Stark programmed JARVIS to cut the surveillance off."

Natasha's ears perked at the information. The computer has the ability to bypass security measures?

Steve shook her head. "I'll make sure to call you when Natasha and I spar next, but I think Fury's lifting your restrictions anyway." He turned to address her with a smile. "No need for late night secret get-togethers."

"Ooh," Clint said like he was a twelve-year-old. "Cap, is there more to this than you're telling me?" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Natasha remained silent as the captain shook his head. "No," he said, looking at the spy who refused to help, rather looking at him amusingly. Clint laughed again and tossed his arrow back into his quiver. He had come a long way from getting embarrassed when it came to conversations with innuendo (with her help, of course).

The spy just smiled at him to ease his small discomfort.

_"Natasha," she heard a faint knock at the door and the voice of someone she'd come to know well._

_She sighed, standing up from the bed. Sometimes she lazed to the point where she wished JARVIS could physically prop the door open. "What?" she asked softly as she opened the partition._

_"Fury…" he sighed._

_"He wants me in prison."_

_"No, no," he said, shaking his head as he ran his hand through his hair. "I mean, yes, but I got him to give you another chance." He looked at her earnestly, hoping that whatever he says next would convince her that there was more to trust in this place than she thought._

_Natasha just nodded. "Did you…" She sighed and shook her head. "Did he ask why I did it?" He shook his head._

_"I don't think he cares," he said with a kind look. "It doesn't mean I'm not concerned about it."_

_Was this guy for real? Like, honestly. Natasha didn't know that so much patience and kindness could be instilled in a person. Well, it's not like she had a pool of people to pick from when it came to the_ nice _department, growing up in the hostile parts of the KGB and all. But still, despite her lack of knowing good people, she knew that Steve was still a rare one. It left a sinking feeling in her stomach knowing that she's going to end up breaking him. And it's not like she can choose not to build some sort of relationship with him. He's a Level Nine agent. He's Captain America. What better target than he for the Russians who were trying to tear down America, the nation literally attached to his namesake?_

_"What are you doing here this late?" she asked, remembering that she was seconds away from sleeping._

_"Fury took away all your clearances for the mean time, just because he's still trying to figure out a course of action…with everything," he said, scratching the back of his neck. She's learned that it's an idiosyncrasy for his nervousness, but she wasn't aware of what she could be doing that's inducing the reaction. "Come with me" was all he said._

_She furrowed her brows in confusion. "I'm…I'm not allowed to, right? At least that's what JARVIS said."_

_Steve nodded, then a devious smile approached on his face. "Yeah, but I'm a captain. I kinda outrank him," he said cheekily. "Come," he said one last time before walking down the hall, her following because of the intrigue of mystery. The place was vacant enough to where she wasn't seen by any agents who had the capacity to usurp the soldier's antics. The lower level agents looked at her more than they did Steve, probably afraid, or judging. Either one Natasha knew was warranted._

_She was led to a familiar stairwell that would lead to the training room. "Where are we going?" she asked, though she was sure she already knew the answer._

_"I don't think it's nice to keep you cooped up in that place," he said, opening the door to the gym. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s not in the business of doing nice things, so his excuse held very little weight. She went with him anyhow and she stepped in the room—it couldn't possibly hurt to spend time out of isolation and get to know things from the soldier, someone who has access to almost everything the director does. "And no one's gonna know. It's too late at night for anyone to come here anyway."_

_He gave her a gentle smile as he led her onto the mats. "Okay, but what are we doing here? Doesn't sound like you're about to do something appropriate, captain," she said rather suggestively, her eyes narrowing in a spectacle of suspicion and sexiness._

_The man blushed, shaking his head to relieve the heat evident on his face. "We're working out," he said. "But if Fury asks we were never here."_

_"You're not helping your case," she responded, smirking at his reception of her rhetorical advances. A little flirtation never hurt anyone, especially if she's trying to get something out of him. In a moment's passing, her demeanor changed, seeing the discomfort he was in. She could only laugh as he took a defensive position on the scaffold, beckoning her to join him._

_"We have to work on take downs," he said, brushing away the aforementioned exchange._

_She raised an eyebrow, seemingly insulted. "I know how to do that," she retorted, hopping on the platform._

_He just laughed. "I know you can, but it's about the S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol. We have to work on you not hurting anyone."_

_"When will you ever be put in a position like that?" she scoffed, a genuine question._

_He just smiled. "If we need to apprehend someone. Or arrest. We aren't just here to throw punches, Nat," he said. Nat. That's the first time she's heard him say it and she didn't really know how she felt about it. "Plus, you'll learn some new things so you don't go around breakin' Rumlow's arm again."_

_"It's not like he wasn't asking for it," she whispered._

_"I'm not a big fan either, trust me," he said._

_Steve taught her the defensive repertoire obligated by all agents to learn. Natasha didn't necessarily understand the scope of its importance because everything she's been taught was to either pain, subdue, or kill her targets and their neighboring lackeys. It was a different experience. She was pinned down on the mat more times than she'd like, but the captain and all of his humility gave her such a different aura that she didn't really mind. There was nothing patronizing about him, something that even the kindest of teachers had a glint of. He genuinely wanted her to learn and through all of that, never truly felt that he was better than her. In all of his instruction, every step of the way was to the benefit of the spy. He was a completely different breed, tangential to the expectations she holds about the place._

_Upon getting caught, she had always thought about how her life was going to look like in the hands of the enemy. She expected more torture. She assumed there would be less kindness than the way Steve had treated her. She definitely didn't think that she would be given the choices she was given. All of her thoughts prior to this deployment have rendered the prospect of the experiences unbearable._

_Steve snuck her out at the same time (14:25, exactly; always) every Tuesday and Thursday that he was on-call. She figured that his shifts and workouts during graveyard would be more fun in her company and that's why he was putting so much energy in making sure she sees the gym in her current seclusion. It wasn't until a later interaction that she realized that Steve was definitely doing this for her, and not for him. This wasn't an activity meant to pass by the time of his shift. This wasn't meant for him to rack up hours for the paycheck._

_"Why are you doing this?" she remembered asking. They were on a break after going three unstoppable rounds in the ring._

_"I'm sorry?" he asked, looking at her as he downed a water bottle._

_"Getting me out at night and training me. I know it's fun to beat me up and stuff," she said, earning a chuckle from him. "But there must be something more to this than just my company. And the healthy upkeep of your ego every time you make me hit the mat, I'm sure."_

_He laughed again. "It's for when you become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. So Fury sees that you have a lot more to offer than the espionage."_

_Now, Steve was too oblivious to understand the gravity of that statement. He walked to a separate mat to stretch, leaving Natasha to her own devices for a moment. What he didn't understand from what he said that Natasha put so much credence in was the simple fact that he had said "when" and not "if" she became a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She knew well enough that the decision didn't rest on his shoulders, but if they did, the soldier definitely made it known that he wanted her to be a part of this. It's not like she didn't already know such a concept considering that he and the archer brought her back for that purpose, she just didn't expect him to be working this hard. She didn't need him to sneak her out of the room for late night training sessions. She has a mission to do and she's determined enough to prove her worth to the director, _with or without his help_. None of this was pertinent, but Steve was still taking extra effort to make sure that she gets the most out of him, almost insisting that she utilize him and use him as much as she could in the given limbo of time she is being casted out and ignored by Fury._

_It was eerily a warming gesture._

_"Here I thought you're just warming me up to get in my pants," she said._

_His face didn't redden, used to the common jive they consistently engaged in. "Please, if I wanted to I would've done it already," he bit back, his back bending as he stretched his spine. Natasha was taken aback at the usually stoic man. He wasn't one who bordered on arrogance at all. She didn't think he had it in him to banter like that—and banter using flirtation on top of that._

_She just shook her head and took a seat next to him to move into yoga poses._

"You should come grab lunch with me," he said, walking out of the command station after debriefing Fury. It almost sounded like an order and she couldn't find herself to say no. Clint, however, had a date. His third one for the week. And when Natasha asked the soldier why, he answered: "He doesn't really go on dates."

"He just said he was going on one," Natasha said as they walked out of the compound.

"Okay, they're 'dates', but they're not really dates," he said with air quotes. She didn't understand and he chuckled. "Clint's gonna go have sex."

She laughed. "With who?"

"He was with someone named Jessica last week. So, with the time frame…a different girl, probably." He hopped on his bike, and fluidly, she got behind him to get to a cheap diner.

"Please don't tell Clint I told you that," he said, stuffing his face with a burger.

"What's in it for me?"

"Uh…my friendship." He smiled sheepishly. She almost found it cute.

"Okay, good enough, I guess," she said.

He showed her around New York. This would be the first time she's out of the compound after the mission. As they walked through central park, he started, "there's this tree that my old best friend and I used to carve at when we were young."

"Around here?"

"Yeah," he said, changing the direction of his feet until he got to  _the_  tree.

"Buck?" She looked at the imprint of their names, still visible through the timber despite signs of wear and age.

"Yeah, that was his name," he said.

"Was?"

"Passed away years ago," he said sadly. "Kinda why I quit the military."

She nodded. "How'd it happen?"

He subconsciously started picking at the tree. "Train incident. He just…fell. A thousand feet." She didn't know what to say and she was thankful that he moved on. "But when we were young he had been the bigger guy and I'd get beat up all the time. And he'd save me. But if he can't, I'd walk here or take a cab right to this spot because he'd always just be waiting here, so I can go home with him and not have to face my ma until the next morning."

Natasha smiled. "You? Beat up?"

He chuckled. "I was scrawny. Like,  _super_." She went on talking about how she couldn't believe it and him refuting her suspicions.

He gave her his jacket and she hated that. But he wouldn't have it, so she quelled his need for chivalry.

Seeing New York for the first time not warranted by a KGB-sanctioned mission showed her all of the things she missed. With Steve by her side telling her the rich history of the place, especially Brooklyn (he knew so much about the borough all the way from the 1900s that she swore he may have lived there), she was aghast at how much she loved it. It wasn't the history or the culture, but the people. He said that they could be mean, but Natasha's definitely had mean in her life and  _this_  was not it. She's had rude. She's had vulgar. She's had obscene. Her definitions of such certainly didn't match the soldier's.

They went to a bar that was themed to be a speakeasy. She pegged Steve to have the old-school vibe, but not this kind of old. Nonetheless, his cheery self was a sight to behold. He didn't have the rigidity of Captain Rogers and was just regular Steve for the night. She looked at the people on the dance floor and wanted to join them, but didn't know if he would go with her.

"I can't," he said.

"What?"

"I can't dance," he clarified. "You can go dance if you'd like."

She shook her head. "I don't know this kind of dancing."

He chuckled. "You dance?"

"Ballet," she said. Her eyes found the bartender's. "I'll have a cosmopolitan."

"No, she won't," Steve said. She was almost shocked at his control. He'd always been such a passive man when he wasn't in uniform (at least from the interactions they had before). "You're at a speakeasy. Don't order things you can get at a regular bar."

She smirked. "Well, what are the speakeasy drinks?"

He smiled. "I'll just order for you and you'll see." The attention he was giving her was unparalleled. Not that she didn't have men ogling at her, because she definitely did. But Steve was different. She couldn't put a finger on it. "A Hemingway daiquiri and Chicago fizz."

He definitely got the order right.

It wasn't supposed to be a date and neither of them thought it was, but after the bar and Steve dropping Natasha off back to the headquarters, it looked like one to the innocent bystander. Neither of them thought too much into it as Steve gave her a friendly nod before turning and leaving. She didn't know she could like a city so much until today and when she paced to her room to note everything that she saw, she realized that she wrote more about her experience in New York than was necessary for her assignment.

 

"Romanoff I need status on that intel." The captain was shouting in her ear. Her second go-around wasn't meant to be so…chaotic. It was supposed to be an in-and-out. Yet here they were, definitely in, but doesn't seem like they'll be going out.

Some trafficking scheme was harboring in New Mexico. There was noise that the gang in charge of it had three different points of action set up, the current compound they found themselves infiltrating. It was valuable information that Fury got tipped on by the FBI. The reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. was here? It's run by a German fascist, a white supremacist. An international matter, indeed. The FBI have their hands full, so the director gave them access to quietly grab some more intel in the hot summer of the American desert. Natasha did so well on their first mission that Eyepatch gave her access to this one.

The only problem was, they didn't expect so many people ready to for them. It wasn't like they were expected, but Clint was spotted at a nearby tree and the whole mission went  _thhfffft_ , the raspberry-blowing kind, and now the captain and the archer were in a full blown fight. Natasha found her way in without being seen, so currently the perpetrators have only been alerted of two infiltrators.

"Negative." She crawled in the vents. "It's so hot in these things, Barton, how do you do this?"

"I'm just good," he said in her earpiece. She just  _knew_  that he was forming a smirk, one she so badly wanted to slap out of his face.

She crawled through the hollow passages until she found a way down to the ground. There were a few guards, ones who have no way in matching her in combat, so she subdued them as she entered the room. There were two soldiers sitting on swivel chairs and they launched bullets at her, but she relented and dodged them in time. She smacked one unconscious and zapped the other.

"In the control room," she said in her piece.

"I have four in my tail, Cap," she heard Barton say. Natasha hacked through the system and decrypted the files. After breaking down an immense amount of firewalls, she was given access to the two other trafficking sites. She grabbed the flash drive and left the way she came.

"Package secured," she said. Natasha slipped out of the building and the compound just a hair away from being caught. The two men were still fending off a few people so she decided that it might not be so bad chiming in. She gave the small drive to the pilot and rushed to the scene.

She didn't get there soon enough as an explosion rang out of the facility, seeing both the soldier and the bowman flying out of their positions and getting thrown the opposite directions. Natasha's heart sank, but heard someone over her earpiece. "Bart-ton, you alright?" the captain spoke. She decided to run after the archer because the other seemed fine. There was no response from Clint as she ran on top of shipping containers, trying to find exactly where he landed.

Upon seeing the unconscious Hawkeye, Natasha ran and draped an arm over her shoulder. "Cap, I got him. Sull said they're flying in support. We have to get out of here before they start throwing more bombs." She heard the affirmative over her comm and dragged Clint as far as she could until she was met in pace with the soldier, who took the heavy man out of her arms and over his shoulder.

They ran to the quinjet and laid Clint down on its floor. "He's gonna be okay," said the man after setting two fingers on his neck. Natasha nodded and sat. She was putting herself in a trance until she saw something on Steve's arm.

"You're hurt," she said, walking over to him.

"Just a scratch." She believed him, because he  _is_  a super-soldier after all. But still, a glass shard that big into someone's bicep would knock anyone else out unconscious from blood loss.

"Let me," she said, setting a hand on his forearm as she grabbed the antiseptic from his hands. He sighed and relented to her. She wiped the blood from around the wound and used her fingers as tweezers. "It's pretty big shrapnel I'm pulling out," she said. He nodded, feeling the sting as the glass shard made it out of his arm. "Shit," he heard her whisper.

"What?"

"There's more in your wound. They broke off after it entered."

"Makes sense. My bones can shatter glass," he said, offering a sheepish smile that she could only roll her eyes out. Keeping a gauze over the wound to prevent flow, she reached behind him for the medical kit. They were  _too_  close, her chest resting on his shoulder.

The man didn't seem to notice. She grabbed actual tweezers and dug around his opening for remaining shrapnel, to which he winced at, but no further. She bandaged his wound and sat down at a chair a couple of spaces away as she looked at Clint. Steve made the effort to move from his seat so he could walk over and sit next to her. She heard him say a faint "thanks" and looked at the spectacle she was engrossed at.

"He's a tough one. He'll wake up in a bit, I'm sure," he said, noticing her shielded apprehension. She nodded at his placation, understanding that it's just the kind of thing that he does. Steve Rogers is too optimistic for this line of work. Or maybe she's just never been put in a position where optimism might get you out. It was always the hard choices that she had to make so she's considered all her preoccupations  _very_  pessimistic. Any glimmer of hope (which she has ye to experience—the word might as well not exist for her) is thrown out the window for the black widows. So she nodded to let him know that she understood where he's coming from, even though she didn't feel the same.

When they got back to the compound, Clint was still in his stupid sleep. She said stupid because he literally sleeps all the time so he had no excuse being unconscious for this long. She didn't even realize she was angry at him as they rolled him off to the operating room. She didn't even know he  _needed_  an operation. Natasha thought back to what he said halfway through the mission.  _"I'm just good" my ass._

She headed to the captain's quarters to see how he was holding up. He looked as bummed as she was. "They get the intel?" she asked, leaning on the doorjamb of his office as he flipped through pages worth of debriefing.

He nodded at her. And then he smiled. "Let's go grab lunch." She rolled her eyes and walked away, knowing he was gonna follow her even if she didn't respond.

"Is this our thing now? Lunch?" she quipped, feeling the soldier catch up with her stride.

"It wouldn't be if you kept saying no like the first one hundred times I asked you," he smiled boyishly. She wanted to punch that out of his face. She honestly wanted to punch anyone who smiled at her in their face. Tony Stark and Clint Barton's stupid smirk can also go. Bruce was honestly the only one she liked out of all of them. And Steve, obviously. But not too obvious to her.

They were in the middle of eating when the soldier decided to get personal. "How did you end up working for the KGB?"

She shrugged. She wasn't really in the mood for this again after Fury had drained her of all the information she knew (or the ones she could tell him at least) months ago. She didn't think she'd have to disclose that information with anyone else. Natasha was about to speak when the soldier decided for her. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. It's just that we work together. Clint and I trust each other because of all that we've been through and all that we know about each other. And now that I think you'll be working with us often, I think..." He trailed off, trying to think of the correct words.

She had to let out a laugh. "You both practically recruited me."

He smiled. That was one she didn't want to smack out of his face. It was cute, honestly. "They trained me when I was seven. Well... they took me when I was five, but they didn't really start till later," she disclosed.

He nodded. Steve knew as much as anyone did, with her breaking a soldier's arm and killing someone. It was unspoken knowledge that the training back where she came from was entirely different than the one here. And he knew he shouldn't ask the next question, but couldn't help himself. A large part of him knew that it was her past environment that led her to her ill-advised actions here. "Agent Vries," he said. He paused for a moment to look at her, seeing her features darken.

She shook her head and set down her sandwich. "I apologized as much as I could. I get that if you want to hold that against me I…"

"No, no." He shook his head almost violently. "No one's holding it against you."

"I'm sure her family is."

"Well, that's not something we can control," he said. Their eyes were fixed on each other. She didn't realize how blue they were until now. "And I'm not saying we can forget it just happened. I just wanna know why." His features were soft, Natasha almost wanted to hold his face.

She didn't know if she wanted him to know. The words that left her betrayed her. "When I was eleven, I had a best friend named Vanya. We were in this thing Madame B liked to call  _odin k odnomu._  It basically means one versus one." He nodded in understanding. "They don't like it when the girls get too close to each other."

"What did you have to do?"

Steve saw her pupils constrict, the whites of her eyes dimming, and it almost sucked the life out of him. There was a looming dread or hurt, a caliginosity that he last saw when he and Clint stood above her at the Parliament just moments before he knocked her out. He almost feared it, but his emotions turned into empathy, anticipating the words that might come out of her mouth.

"If kids from the Red Room grow up knowing they can have friends or other relationships…" she started. "That means that their allegiance is not to the country, but to their own happiness. The Red Room would fail."

"But they didn't. Not until you let us know where they were."

She nodded. "So when these relationships surfaced, when my handler, Karpov, found me and her laughing together, they put us in  _odin k odnomu_. We stood in front of each other with a gun in our hands. You can assume who won."

His hand found its way on top of hers. She didn't know she longed for some sort of touch until now. She'd been stuck in this place for almost sixteen months now and, yeah, she's made friends, but no one hugs. People shake hands, but she's never been put in a situation where she needed to do that. Natasha realized that aside from pulling Clint out of the explosion and holding Steve's arm when she was treating him ( _and_  aside from punching bad guys), this interaction was the only kind of touch that she's felt since Bruskin set his hands on her shoulders. This was the first intimate feeling she's been a part of.

They sat in silence for awhile as he went back to eating food. She found that she lost her appetite. They were approached by a man she was familiar with, the same doctor that she saw often when she was recovering from Clint's  _stupid_  arrows impaling her way back then. "Surgery went well," he said, but Natasha could sense through lies.

"You don't seem so sure," she sniped. Her sense of protectiveness was new. Steve didn't stop her from wanting to berate the doctor.

"Everything went smoothly until we realized an anomaly," he said calmly. "But we won't be able to tell until he wakes up."

"What do you mean?"

"Agent Barton will be suffering permanent hearing damage in his left ear," he said sadly. "His right ear shows conditions of tinnitus, but with the limited hair cells we found, he's going to suffer hearing loss in it as well."

"So…he's deaf," Natasha said. Her and Steve were standing now.

"Completely in one ear. His right one might be able to recognize muffling, but your words would never be legible enough. On top of that, if he is suffering from tinnitus, he won't be able to hear anyone at all. But he'll still be able to speak to you."

"We have hearing aids and cochlear implants," Steve started.

He shook his head in disappointment. "Agent Barton had a bone-anchored hearing aid in his left ear once when he was a child. He suffered hearing loss then. It got better so they took it out and he's never needed it because it cured his deafness altogether. If we could do that again, we would, but his hearing damage is from the destruction of hair cells in the explosion. If the damage was purely in the cochlea or other superficial systems in his ear, we would be able to fix it. But hair cells are irreversible."

Steve had to sit. Natasha was the only one who continued speaking to the doctor, her partner in his own reverie. "How's this going to affect work?"

"I still have to speak to Director Fury. If he has enough support when deploying strike teams, he can likely stay in missions on vantage points. Someone would just have to be there with him on rooftops or trees in order to help him with things he can't hear." Natasha nodded. She also asked when they could see him and when Steve stayed put, she put a hand on his shoulder.

"We can go visit him now, Steve," she said.

He followed her, seeing a comatose Clint with a white bandage around his head, covering his ears. "How long before he wakes up?" he asked her.

"Doctor said a few days. He'll be going in and out of consciousness."

Steve nodded.

She and the captain stayed by his side. Natasha was watching videos on American Sign Language. She knew the Russian one, but wanted to learn just so she can converse better with Clint when he wakes up.

They saw him shifting on the bed, and when his eyes fluttered open, he was met with the smiles of Steve and Natasha. They almost looked pathetically sympathetic and he couldn't figure out why until the ringing in his ear told him everything he needed to know. Despite the weakness, his hand spasmed to point at his ear, currently covered by a bandage. "I'm deaf," he said, being able to hear  _some_  kind of noise that left his mouth, but not hearing it fully.

Steve nodded and spoke. "How you holding up?" he asked, seeing as Clint's eyes travelled to his lips so he could read them.

"This is sucky," he said softly. He felt himself in control of his intonation, but still panicked at the idea that he can't hear anything. Again.

Natasha gestured  _hi, Agent Barton_  in sign language. He almost chuckled at how slow she was, the letters of his last name taking awhile as she tried to remember which letter went with which gesture. "You don't have to do that," he said with a smile.

She let out another gesture:  _I know_.

Clint asked about the surgery. He asked about how the mission went. He failed to ask how they're going to fix his hearing, assuming that he'd still be able to after this. Steve couldn't tell him his true conditions.

It wasn't until they dragged him into the Avengers Tower and pushed him into Stark and Bruce's lab when he started feeling the gravity of his situation. "Okay, so I'm  _deaf_  deaf?" he asked as the two nodded.

"Like,  _super_ ," Tony added. That definitely didn't help the situation. "You joining us anytime soon, Red?" he asked her with a smirk. She had to control rolling her eyes and, instead shook her head. The billionaire jumps at every opportunity to ask her to be one of the Avengers.

Natasha and Steve stood back as they formed examinations on his ears. Clint could feel anger rising within him, resentment to no one, but rather upset at the whole situation in general. It had been a couple of weeks since he left the medical bay. She gestured  _you're gonna be okay_ , and he was honestly surprised at how quickly she was getting all of this. Natasha had to be watching YouTube and gesturing for half of the day to pick up this much this swiftly. Or had to have a coach, at least.

She and Steve left him in the laboratory. "So this is the Avengers," she smiled.

His lips tugged at the corners as he nonchalantly walked to the fridge, letting her know that he was extremely familiar with this place. Her, though? Complete stranger. "You've met Stark before, right?"

"Yeah, but…" she sat on the _very_  large couch. "Didn't peg the group to be living this luxuriously."

He laughed. "That's all him. The only reason Banner lives here is because he's one floor away from their lab. They're kind of workaholics."

"Who's the other one?" she asked, vaguely remembering that they had another player on the team.

"Thor visits sometimes," he said, handing her a water that she didn't ask for. "But he's up in the universe somewhere. Maybe Asgard. Not super sure."

"Do you live here?"

He shook his head. "Nah, I'm sticking to Brooklyn."

She nodded. Steve toured her around the place, guiding her with the extent of his knowledge, because even he wasn't sure about the nooks and crannies of a tower that was definitely way too big for the five of them. He was paged by Fury at the last moment, flying out on the quinjet that all three of them used to get here, leaving Natasha stranded by herself at the penthouse. She went into the elevator and spoke. "Hey, JARVIS."

"Hello, Miss Romanoff."

"Where can I get the best view around here?" she asked, leaning on the railing of the lift.

"That would probably be Mr. Stark's office at the top floor," he said.

"Mind bringing me there?"

"Not at all. He keeps these top floors  of the building open for anyone who has access."

"And I have access?" she asked as she felt the elevator speeding up.

"Yes, Miss Romanoff, at the request of Captain Rogers."

She smirked. "Thanks, JARVIS."

She heard a "you're welcome" as soon as the door opened to the highest floor. She figured that the private organization of the Avengers have fewer information than S.H.I.E.L.D., but they certainly still have valuable information. Tony didn't have cameras at this floor, only because it's just him who frequents this place, she feels. He saw his suits and a few computers that was territory she definitely wanted chartered.

The Russian was able to find information on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, the fact that there wasn't just one, but three. Stark definitely hacked into Fury's plans, but a lot of the information was redacted because she's sure the director doesn't have electronic copies of the most sensitive information.

New York also didn't seem to be the most valuable headquarters. The Avengers database had information on the DC sector, as well as the London one, letting her know that targeting Manhattan wasn't the correct move. She made sure to keep that information.

She found logs of individual Avenger profiles. Stark is weak without a suit. As long as Banner doesn't turn green, he's useless in combat. Steve and Clint she knew how to beat. She didn't feel that such information was necessary because her assignment wasn't to take down the team, but to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. and America. These heroes were just contingencies to the larger mission.

She saw Thor's file and Tony had noted his weakness as "?" on the dossier. She couldn't help but laugh.

One of the things she made sure to grab was Stark's hacking platform. Natasha wanted to know exactly how he creates his mainframes and even control S.H.I.E.L.D. firewalls, with him being able to hack the cameras in the compound through JARVIS's programming (and how it allowed Steve free reign to override JARVIS functions to sneak her out in the middle of the night). She took note of everything that he does, the tendencies and mannerisms of his own code and downloading his own software system so she's able to grasp it before creating a secure network to log everything she finds in her own computer. Which reminded her that she  _really_ needed to get a laptop to avoid the possible confiscation of her own written work. Natasha needed to be one step ahead. Always. And using Stark's own program, mixing it with code only she could make, she would be able to manipulate the protection of her own data so it won't be easily hacked. It would allow her a safe place to store all of her information notes, so that she wouldn't need to physically write them on pieces of paper, a practice that can be so easily found.

She was about to leave when she decided to look out at the view. She wasn't fully lying to JARVIS when she asked where to find the best sight of New York City. Natasha heard the door open but didn't budge in her place by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"What are you doin' here?" Clint's voice resonated around the floor.

She smiled and turned. She gestured  _view, look_  to him, making him chuckle at the odd and novice semantics.

"Cap?"

"Called in for an assignment," she spoke, him nodding after reading her lips.

"We're gonna go eat dinner," he said. She peeled herself away from the windows and started walking with him.

 _How was the nerd consultation?_ she signed as they walked inside the elevator.

He laughed in response. "They built a computer screen where JARVIS translates everything using animated hands for sign language so they could tell me what they were doing. Think Master Hand in Super Smash Bros." She looked at him oddly. "You don't know what I'm talking about are you?" She laughed, shaking her head. "Okay, think...Addams Family's Thing."

Natasha squinted her eyes. "I only know so much about American provincialism."

He feigned insult. "Super Smash Bros. and Addams Family are globalized legends."

"Legends are often myths."

"Not that kind of legend you walnut."

"I can't believe you just called me a walnut."

He shook his head. "You're a disgrace to both video game  _and_  television industry, Romanoff."

"Actually, Addams Family were originally from low-traffic pages of a magazine. It was a single-paneled comic, _not_ TV." She smirked.

He squinted at her. "This was a farce to render me a fool."

"At least we agree that you are one. You use _walnut_ as an insult," she said. He rolled his eyes, slightly laughing as they walked out of the elevator.

"Are you also pretending to not know what Super Smash Bros. is?"

"I've mastered every character from Fire Emblem if you wanna go at it sometime," she said with another smirk.

"You  _will_ face the wrath of my Kirby, Romanoff."

"Okay, geek. I'm counting on it," she said with a smile, sitting back on the large, expensive couch.

Natasha was persuaded to stay there for the remainder that Clint was. She was torn between spending time with Steve and the archer or sticking to her lonely room in S.H.I.E.L.D.. She decided that staying a few days with all of the boys wouldn't hurt.

It turns out that those "few" days turned into a month. Clint was getting restless. "They're getting there," Steve said to him. JARVIS flashed three-dimensional holograms for translation wherever he was, making it easy to understand what everyone was saying without needing to read their lips.

"This whole thing just  _sucks_ ," he huffed at the captain.

"I know," Steve replied. Natasha was on the couch, diligently learning more about American Sign Language.

"I told you, you don't need to do that," the archer said, clearly irritated.

"I want to," she said without looking up from the book, or making her lips visible, knowing that JARVIS was going to do the translation. It really was like Master Hand creating real-life subtitles for the deaf. She didn't know why Tony didn't just make them into actual subtitles with words, instead of an animated sign language hand. He said that it was more "cool" and that, along with Clint's use of "walnut", told her everything she needed to know. And that was: she was working with absolute idiots.

"See, you don't even need it now. Not with Tony's stupid translator!" Clint's voice was rising, which, without the ability to hear, he couldn't recognize. Steve set a hand on his shoulder, Natasha looking up from the couch simultaneously to meet the bowman's eyes. She closed the book and walked to the kitchen platform so she could stand beside him.

"I'm sorry," she said. Clint watched as JARVIS flashed a pair of hands. "I just don't like not being able to tell what that is because it signs so fast," she said, pointing at the screen.

Clint laughed a little and nodded. "I'm sorry, I'm just…"

"Tired, I know," she said. And she was, too. She wanted to go back to S.H.I.E.L.D. because this place didn't suit her purpose. She had to be building a relationship with Fury, not babysitting a deaf man.

"I just wanna go on an assignment again," he said.

Steve nodded at that. "Fury said that he's pulling you next week for back up—for a mission with another strike team," he said.

"For back up?" He drank his coffee. "Let's hope they run deep into trouble then." Steve and Natasha laughed as Clint sent them a cheeky look, drinking the rest of his roast. Tony and Bruce pranced into the room a short moment later, Tony barely being able to keep his words in.

"We have something, but it's not everything," Bruce said, handing him a small earpiece. "It's for your right one."

Clint almost didn't take it, his hand moving slowly to grab the small device because he almost couldn't believe it. He'd been there for so long and even Steve looked like he was starting to lose hope. Clint inserted the small chip in his left ear, feeling a buzz then a stinging ring that made him want to pull it out, but Stark restrained his hand.

"It's running a diagnostic on your tinnitus," the JARVIS animation said in tandem with Stark's words. "It's gonna be uncomfortable, but only for a minute."

That minute turned out to be the longest minute he'd ever felt. The piece felt like it was swallowing his ear. But when it subsided, the ringing was gone. He couldn't hear a single thing. He gestured  _oh, great so I'm_ fully _deaf now._  Everyone was completely silent.

Natasha was the only one able to understand his hands, but JARVIS beat her to a translation. "Agent Barton said he was fully deaf," the AI said. Clint's eyes grew wide because he was able to hear the computer so much better than the muffles his right ear were feeding him for the past month.

"Tony what did you do?" Natasha scolded the billionaire, a panic shooting up both of the geniuses, but Clint decided to interrupt his refutation.

"Oh, I can hear," he said with a smile. "It's like the volume's all the way down but the ringing's is gone."

Bruce and Tony let out sighs of relief they didn't think they were holding. Steve sent the scientist a pat on the back and the billionaire said something about needing to throw a party, Bruce immediately telling him that it's not a good idea until they get all of his hearing back. Tony moped, but both returned to their lab after Clint expressed his gratitude a few times.

"Can you hear me?" Natasha asked.

"Yeah," he smiled.

A week passed and the genius pair were still slaving away at creating an apparatus to permanently bring Clint's hearing back. The agent was called for an assignment, just like Steve had promised, and Natasha thought she was going to get the chance to go back and try to infiltrate the agency, but the soldier had other plans.

"Lunch?" he asked with a sheepish smile. She could only let out a chuckle at his offering.

When Clint returned from his assignment, he was tackled by the  _science bros_. "We did it," Tony said, giving him a piece that looks exactly like what they'd given him earlier. He looked at it skeptically. "It's gonna hurt like the last time, but worse because it's gonna push its way to your auditory nerve and sink into your skin," the billionaire said with a smile, seeing nothing wrong about what he said.

Clint almost didn't want to take it when Bruce set a hand on his shoulder. "It works. We promise."

"And I'm gonna get my hearing back?" he asked. He took faith in the scientist's gentle nod and put the chip in his left ear. The same ringing ensued, with even more pain as the gadget ate through his ear. He screamed at the feeling and Natasha almost leaped for him until Steve held her back, both of them wincing at the sight of Clint holding his ears as he kneeled in pain. After it subsided, he was breathing heavy, faint with his back to the ground.

The two geniuses hovered over hem with hopeful smiles. "Can you hear me?" Tony asked with a louder tone than needed, causing the archer to flinch and cover his ear. He almost launched a punch to his face until he settled and started laughing, the others nervously chiming in because they didn't understand his hysterics.

"Yes, I can hear you," he said, standing slowly and hugging the two men. That was definitely a sight to behold.

The two sighed of relief as Clint thanked them more than a few times. And when he glanced at Natasha, he smiled as he walked over to her and the captain. He pulled something out of his backpack. "The mission was at Volgograd. Made sure to get that for you as a thank you with you learning sign and stuff. So, thanks Tash," he said with a small smile.

Natasha almost hugged the familiar bottle of _Moskovskaya_ , a little taste of vodka from home. She felt warm with his new moniker, too. "Thanks, Clint," she said.

He pulled out a Captain America bobblehead. "And for you," he said to the soldier kindly took it, arousing a laugh from everyone in the room.


	4. привет vasily

**Now.**

_Silence engulfed them, until he grew impatient and gave her the worst news she could hear at the moment. "We need everything now," he said. "Alexi is impatient for the new republic."_

"It's too early," she said to him as she stared at the mirror, afraid that turning around to face him would somehow bring back all the terrible that she was five years ago. So much has changed. Natasha had decided to make this assignment fit her mold more than theirs—the underground KGB. There was still so much to do; so much to do to make sure that Steve (and everyone else she loved) is saved.

Every day she fooled herself by saying that her allegiance was still to the fallen Soviet empire. She was in a bind, an impossible scenario that made it unable for her to choose. Telling Fury and everyone else would result in getting them killed. He hasn't had any contact with Bruskin in five years, but seeing as Karpov is standing in this vacant women's bathroom of a luxury cruise line where she was hosting a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission only said that there had been an eye on her. Had she just been sloppy? It couldn't be. She didn't know how her old handler had been able to tail her, let alone find a way to figure out all her endeavors inside a covert clandestine agency…but she was willing to bet that he had done so in a less conventional manner than she had. (Not that the way she's defecting was traditional in its sense, but something tells her that the way Vasily Karpov found her left more people dead than Natasha did rising up the ranks,  _even_  if she had that one casualty long ago, the young Agent Vries still sometimes the topic of her mind).

" _We cannot wait_ ," he said in Russian. " _At the rate that our developments are going, there is no more time needed to waste. Another year would just be prolonging the frozen state of the new capital. Russia has been suffering far too long for us not to move at the first sign of green light_."

What green light? Something in wherever Alexi Bruskin was hiding his operation was the benefactor to this whole insurgence. Greed—such a thing has engulfed the minds of her superiors for so long (both from the Soviet Union and the United States, she's surmised), that one success in whatever human trial or weapons building or any other experiment they're conducting for national propaganda, has brought Karpov here in her midst, itching to eat away at the knowledge she's accrued over the years. It was a green light, one step forward at the path where Bruskin wanted to be. One step is always different than the many steps to the finish line.

Natasha was one step. Giving up the rest of Russia—all of the operations they were running before she had defected—and the sacrifice of the many lives of people who thought that they were in this for the good of everything, especially the good of their country, was also one step. A huge one at that. But steps don't amount to the miles. Whatever Bruskin had done was yet another step, but one she knew just grew from his glutton for a better republic—his avarice that Natasha was sure was driving him mad considering that if this didn't work, Natasha's intel-gathering would have been for nothing and the surrendering of the many lives in those KGB outposts would have been everything but honorable. Everything but worth it. Bruskin was itching for development. Five years would do that to a man who wanted nothing but power.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and the small sound it made was heard in the silent bathroom save for the slight hum of the aftermath of a toilet flushing by someone who had used one of the stalls just seconds before they found themselves here. The small droplets leaving her chin birthed from the splash her face had taken just moments before (in an attempt to clear her mind of hallucinating the vision of Vasily Karpov—which proved fruitless given that he's standing right behind her) also clanged a little bit too loud for Natasha's senses every time a droplet hit the marble end of the sink. Karpov's emotions haven't changed since that moment she thought he was in the imagination. Well…they haven't changed in the nineteen years she'd known him. He reminded her of Fury a bit, aside from the former's psychopathic desire to crack people's necks constantly as a way to blow off steam. Punching bags and dummies were apparently futile in quenching his need for pandemonium. He was a threat to humanity as much as she was and they both knew it. The difference is that now she's standing here in an attempt to prolong the demise of America she'd learned to love—the demise of the family she had grown into. Natasha, for the first time, found herself  _bargaining_  for the lives of her targets. This may even be the longest conversation she's held with the man.

The phone in her pocket buzzed again, and the loudening of her thoughts fell short as her external senses decided to cloud her consciousness again. Water dripping from her chin. The murmur of post-toilet-flushing. The fixed eye contact with the apparition of her old life through the reflective frame. The walls closing in as she imagined this boat sinking in the abyss of the Pacific Ocean (right before she threw everyone else but her and her old handler off into life rafts), hoping that their deaths would be the end of this assignment. Her pocket vibrating another time, resonating a sound and poking her flesh through the fabric, which warbled her expression through the mirror. It was like a silent ask out of habit, as if answering her own damn phone needed permission from the man who had been like her personal bodyguard for far too many years than she'd care to disclose.

She broke the fierce connection of their gazes by pushing on the lever of the paper dispenser, dabbing her face with the expensive roll that felt so soft in her skin it might have been 9-ply tissue. She dried her hands after, grabbing the phone from her front pocket as if Karpov wasn't in her presence. Maybe if she ignored him enough he'd disappear.

> _ur not answering through the piece. you alright? clint and bob found everything  
>  _ _keeping jacques busy rn  
>  _ _boat's docking in an hr and we need sitrep while the couple's busy lookin' around honolulu_

Steve was on the sending end.

Natasha froze as she looked back up to see that Karpov's gaze hasn't moved. She stared at him for a split second longer than normal before moving her thumbs across the StarkPhone and formulating a response. 

>   _Felt queazy for a sec. I'll be right there_

" _This is not the time for hesitation, Natalia,_ " his voice finally rung out again after a minute of the shared silence (though to Natasha's senses it felt like an hour).

" _The mission is not yet completed_ ," she said, internally wincing at the defiant tone. It was new. There was no one else in her life who gave her less confidence than Karpov did. He, Bruskin, and Madame B were the only ones who had that effect on her. She felt like a child, her subconscious submitting to those people like they had a hold on her—like she didn't have the right to think for herself. So everything, even that small reluctance of answering a message in Vasily's presence like she needed his approval for something so trivial, was taxing. They had indoctrinated for her to listen to them, always. And Natasha didn't know if there was a scissor strong enough to cut that thread. Maybe she'll always be their puppet. No matter how blissful of a life Steve had shown her. The hands holding her up like the marionette they had fixed her to be would never leave. It could never be severed no matter how much individuality she had learned to have these past five years. " _There is still more for me to find. I can't jeopardize this mission_ ," she said, her Soviet accent thick giving no ounce of a hint that she hadn't spoken the language aloud in such a long time. Her insecurities were locked up, but she couldn't help but feel them banging at the cage in her head as she fought to control yet another wince at the tone she was speaking in.

Another vibrate and she couldn't help but snap her eyes to her phone at the reply from the only man she was expecting. 

>   _worried about u nat lemme know if u need anything_

The man across her didn't move. He didn't say anything and his gaze was unreadable. Before she could break down and show him just how weak she'd grown in the presence of the good Americans, she broke the silence in an attempt to finish this conversation and get back to the arms of the only guy who could comfort her. " _One of my contacts is wondering where I am. I needn't stray too long._ " His gaze shifted, one of a frown, she thinks.

" _I will come and speak to you about this later. I'll assume that you'll know how to find me in such a small boat_ ," he replied stoically. "Small boat" was an understatement, but the comment wasn't one meant to patronize. Karpov knew Natasha will be back. He had a way with the black widows and she wasn't any different. Her espionage skills were unparalleled and it's not that he's kept himself hidden. If his response was any indication, Natasha thinks he's probably registered on an alias in the ship database. An alias that only she would know; only she could find.

She nodded and all but ran out of the confinement of the ladies' room, earpiece back and working in the bed of her auditory. Pocketing her phone, she walked to where she had left Steve in the breakfast room but found no trace of his body on the chair of their designated table. She didn't see Duquesne and his mistress either, and, normally, she wouldn't panic, but the prior conversation made her antsy. Was Vasily not alone? Had he taken Steve? Bobbi and Cilnt? Surely they can handle themselves, but a surprise ambush of expert, Soviet-trained spies, would stun even the best of them. Natasha frantically searched the room until her eyes landed on a man at the far end of the ship's bow.

The breakfast room was open to the outside, the roof of the floor above them covering half of the deck, while the other half was an open space, a place someone can sea-watch. On the railing, staring out into the ocean was the striking reflection of the sun on blonde hair owned by one of the only three men in her life who gave her an insurmountable sense of safety, his being the strongest and far too irrational of an emotion for her liking. Nonetheless, after finding pragmatism not to be the correct tactic for her assignment here, she has compromised to satiate into the impracticalities of  _Steve_  (and Clint, though more mild and less carnal— _way_  less carnal, so little to the point of inexistence, as she'd grown to love him as a brother; such a thought repulsed her). Was sleeping with the contact rational? Definitely not, but that kind of indulgence has brought her a tidbit of happiness in a mission she wasn't fond of. And maybe it had some logic given that he trusted her more now…but that was definitely not the reason she started this in the first place. She lost her sensibilities the moment he kissed her one New Year's Eve and hadn't been able to control herself since. So despite the sober reason of sleeping with Steve to make him trust her, she had actually grown to like the pattern of unsoundness. The spontaneous directions of sex were wonderful because, well…it's sex. But it's something she shared with Steve. Impromptu coitus on her motorcycle, or the S.H.I.E.L.D. elevator, or the alleyway after an assignment at a nightclub—all of those things were heavily impractical and unnecessary. But they were  _fun_. And they were fun because they were with Steve. Because he's the only one who had faith in her from the very beginning. Sex would, no doubt, have earned her his trust, but she knew that even if they weren't having this casual relationship, Steve would  _still_  be as trusting of her as he was now. That even if there were no guaranteed orgasms at the end of the night, he would have still learned to have the amount of confidence he had in her now. And that was all because he is the man he is. So…no, this sex thing wasn't a part of the assignment even if at the end of the day it looked like one.

Natasha never stopped short at achieving her goals. She'd put her body out on the line a few more times than decent to get something she wanted in the past, as young as fourteen years old. But Steve? He was far from a target. Natasha learned awhile ago that she wanted nothing from him. That the sex had no means of an objective for her. That she would get all the information she needed to finish this mission without manipulating him or Clint or Bobbi or Fury. But more importantly, if she could help it, Steve. He was to be put as far away from her own agenda as possible, because at the end of the day, Steve believed in her. And that was the only thing that kept her going now. Everyone can hate her, just not him. God-forbid: not him.

She didn't realize that her feet took a mind of their own, calming her from the initial anxieties of not instantly seeing his ass on the chair where she last saw him. Pulling out her phone, she turned a switch on the side that Stark had created as a buffer, so that no one would be able to listen in with radio frequency even if they tried, breaking even the connection in their intercomms with the two other agents. She walked her usual spy walk, her steps lacking any sound. And her arms forming around his waist from behind was too intimate for their standards, but she couldn't help herself, in need of something that told her she was still real. That told her she was maybe more of a woman than the Red Room made her be. Touching Steve was the only way she could instill that thought in her head. Vasily did a number on her for someone who did nothing but hold a small conversation in a luxurious ship bathroom.

The soundless footfalls leading up to her contact with Steve caused him to tense at the sudden arms wrapped around him. But considering that there could really only be one person that was allowed to do that, his mind racing to fill in the gaps of who it could be, he relaxed as he smiled out into the ocean. His arms remained straight at the elbows as his hands grasped lightly on the railing of the ship's bow. The strong squeeze of the woman's arms, linked together with each of her hands holding their opposite forearms to lock him in place, was an indication of vulnerability he knew she would only show if something was wrong. His smile didn't last long.

"Everything okay?" he asked, saying what he should instead of what he wanted.  _Your arms are around me and that's definitely not something we do and I'm not complaining, but I'd really like to know what this means._  That seemed too loaded of an inquiry for him to start, now knowing that something else was going on in her mind.

"Yeah," she whispered against his back, the fabric of his very expensive Dolce & Gabbana button-up muffling her words, but loud enough for only him to hear.

He released his grip on the railing as he turned and leaned his back on it. He wasn't sure what to do with his own arms until he opted to bring his hands back to grasp on the railing, his elbows bent in right angles on his sides. It was an openness that lacked the intimacy he didn't want to initiate. Knowing Natasha, she would run if he put his arms around her in moments not pertinent to the charade of a couple. For now, he refrained the impending need to wrap her in his arms, afraid that she'd gut him for the unnecessary contact. Jacques wasn't around, and though looking like a couple on a public deck could definitely look like a pretense for the assignment, no one was around to see them but the wandering gazes of people still having breakfast inside the hall. And Natasha also didn't look like she wanted to poke fun at their dubious personas…not like those moments in their room balcony where she kept the farce to ward off anyone who might be listening. This definitely didn't look (or feel) like one of those, the way her arms were too tight around his midsection—too tight to be an act.

"Five years," he said, earning a confusing look from the only other person on the deck. "That's how long I've known you. So I'm not an idiot."

She shook her head, knowing that if she  _really_  wanted to hide what happened, she could. Or maybe she just wasn't as good of a spy anymore. Whichever it was, it didn't matter because deep down, she wanted him to know everything. There was a need to explain; that she's trying her best to save him from the evident destruction-to save him from the hurt she was orchestrating. But she couldn't. Given that, the least she could do was let him in on the little projections of her emotions. To let him know (for when he looked back when all was said and done) that this was above the duplicity. That whatever they were wasn't part of it all. And that despite the lies she constantly had to manage, she was still real when it came to him. "I saw someone," she said. He didn't ask knowing that his face was already distributing the question to her. "From back in Russia."

His face softened, and he freed himself from the metaphorical chains his wrists were linking onto the rail as his hands made their way to her neck. "Nat," he said softly, urging her as he felt her push her head to the side to revel in the contact one of his hands made with her cheek. The way she smiled at him, pained, could've shattered the vessel in his chest if the serum didn't prevent such a thing.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm okay. We worked together. An asshole like the rest of them. So it's okay."

"He didn't see you, did he?" The panic strained his voice, one that made Natasha feel so unexplainably soft.

 _He did. Definitely did._  "No," she said, keeping the veneer of truth in her face, knowing that it was a white lie to save himself from worrying. And from asking further questions of things that would produce answers unsafe for him to know. He didn't ask anymore knowing that it was something that haunted her, for a different reason that he knew. Steve, believing that Natasha had gone straight and severed all her ties from Russia, fully believed that the plaguing memories hurt her in this aftermath. He believed that someone who realized the gravity of who they used to work for, still hurt themselves with the decisions of their past despite renouncing them. And it was definitely the truth for Natasha. But that was only half of the pain—her demons twofold as she both thought about the wrong of her history  _and_  the wrong of her present.

"I'll have Bobbi run a check on why he's here," he said, his hands still on her neck (too large that his thumbs and a few fingers had to rest on her cheeks).

She shook her head. "No need," she said. "I already did in the bathroom. He's on vacation. Nothing fishy." She had to convince herself that the lies were still white.

His overprotection told him to insist, his face already curtained in the worry that she wanted to prevent. Natasha wrapped herself tighter onto him, their midsections clashing in an effort to get even closer than they already were. There were the looming questions of  _What's happening?_ and  _What does this mean for us?_  and  _Why are we so close when we've, more than once, discussed the conditions of this arrangement?_ , but neither of them wanted to address them at the moment.

Natasha's encounter with Vasily, and the fear that pounded in her chest of the repercussions of this assignment that produced constant nightmares, were telling of her feelings. Ones she really didn't want to disclose with herself. They weren't real.  _It's for children._ So she didn't admit them even to herself because it would be foolish to. It would be stupid to deny that she'd grown to like these people, so she wasn't going to. But acknowledging anything more than the rapport between her and Steve, and endorsing that there was more to the sexual interactions, are too sensitive of a line to walk across. This need for comfort, she believes, was just a human desire for safety. And it was practical to search for the person who gave her that. So hugging Steve ins this vacant deck wasn't all too unreasonable if anyone looked at the science. She felt unsafe, so she went to the one who made her feel the opposite. It's the human inclination to drive themselves as far away from danger as possible. This was a purely sensical move, if anyone asked her.

He let a kiss fall on her forehead, taking a leap despite the fear of her running. This new thing…whatever it was, away from the flirtatious and enticing provocativeness of their escapades, and turning into a more serious and concerning intimacy, produced a heavy cloud of inquiry. And that kiss on the forehead is disparate to the public displays of affection they engage in for disguise. This was real. And what was the worst thing that could happen? Natasha could run, but not very far (unless she disappeared in Hawaii, but even then, it was a fairly small island; she wouldn't be able to disappear altogether because she had a job to do and a mission to accomplish) and she could shut him off completely. Losing the sex was fine…but losing all of her wasn't. And he knew that he wouldn't. She might ignore him—pretend he doesn't exist. But that won't last for very long because he would do everything else after that to fix it. Steve was always the type to live in the now, though. Maybe he just feared time passing him by, scared that one of these days he'll get frozen in a block of ice and wake up in a whole new world of regret. So, Natasha could cower, but he would fix it when it came. He would grant promises he knew he can keep to himself (like say that he promised never to touch her again, and he wouldn't, despite the pain it might bring), say that he doesn't feel anything to preserve their friendship, and even if it would never be the same, he would still have her.

Losing her was the  _worst_  that could happen and that's not something he'd be willing to bargain for. But a kiss on the forehead shouldn't be too much to produce complete, off-the-grid disappearance for Natasha, he's sure. The worst that could happen from this was for her to push herself away from him for a few days, tops, and then they'd talk about it. Because they were nothing if not for communication. That's why the whole casual sex thing worked so well.

Well…as well as it could have until now, considering that there were far too much implied in this forehead smooch for the guidelines they've established.

He noticed her eyes close at his action and he smiled softly. She wasn't running away. He could fist bump himself if it wasn't a ridiculous thing to do.

"Duquesne's back in their cabin," he said, trying not to pamper himself with this connection for too long, afraid that it would be too much.

The arm around his waist loosened to the point where her hands rested on either side of his torso. It was a disappointing change, though he knew that she kept the touch there because of their disarray need to remain within each other. Each person looking for a certain feel no matter how slight, just to let them know that there's still something there.

"Bob and Clint?" she asked, and when Steve turned to start walking back inside the hall, her hands had to fall on her sides. Much to her chagrin, she couldn't make it last longer than she  _needed_  it to. And now they were walking side by side and there was no way for them to touch other than the fragmentary lapses where their arms would collide because of their nonchalant walk. Then, to her surprise, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, refraining from looking at her as he led them to the far end of the hall.

It wasn't until Bobbi and Clint met them at the entrance of the breakfast room and he started talking to them as  _Steph_  when she grew dismayed. This longing for contact was Natalie's husband. It wasn't real. And she decided that playing the part was essential, because she wasn't the type to half-ass. So an arm made it around his back, her hand running up and down across his spine—because that was a  _Natalie_  thing to do. But she also didn't miss the small twitch in his lips, how his smile seemingly grew brighter even if they didn't move an inch.

The other pair of agents, the archer and the spy, briefed them on everything when they walked back to their cabins. The buffer was still on as they spoke freely in Bobbi and Clint's room. Natasha and Clint were sitting on the edge of their queen bed, Bobbi on the sofa, and Steve leaning on the doorjamb of the walkway to the balcony.

"The rest of it is on a cargo ship heading to Sydney," Bobbi said. "We found a bag of money stashed in his unfashionable girlfriend's room." Natasha laughed a little at the chide. "And it has U.S. Reserve written all over it, but not enough to make this ship stop and call it a crime scene. There just wasn't enough there to indict him even if we know what he did. The evidence is somewhere else in the pacific."

"So what's the move now?" Steve asked, shifting as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"What are the chances," Natasha started as she sat up straighter on the comforter. "That a guy known as Swordsman  _kept_  the murder weapon?"

Bobbi perked as she pursed her lips. "He can't be that stupid can he?" Clint asked.

"Would you let go of your arrows, Hawkeye?" Natasha asked with a playful tone.

"No, but…" he said, squinting as he glared at her. "I'm not walking around shooting people with them. They're government sanctioned."

The redhead rolled her eyes. "I have three scars accounted for via your stupid arrows."

"Yeah, and S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me a go on those. Case in point," he retorted. Steve smiled at the interaction, Natasha noticing the friendly environment among them four. It was something she took pleasure in, they way that the four of them have grown within each other. She knew that it could get even better, the boys constantly asking her and Bobbi to join the Avengers, and though the blonde spy said no for reasons unknown, Natasha just couldn't bring herself to build more relationships that would end up broken when the time came. It was good to network for her assignment, but joining that group wouldn't do much after she gained access to Stark's movements after hacking into his "impenetrable" (he calls it) system years ago. It wasn't necessary for the mission and Natasha's done more than the unnecessary already-she thought as she looked at Steve who gave her a warm grin. But the desire was still there to build even better of a home, just like the desire was there to put herself in the arms of a certain soldier. Forever. And the latter was already a hard reality to live with, so joining the Avengers would be another impractical step towards an even greater compromise within herself.

"Okay, Clint. How much of a dick is this guy?" Bobbi asked.

"Pretty big. Almost slashed my hamstrings at some point," he said, frowning at the memory.

"There's no way he'd throw his sword into a dumpster," Bobbi replied with a nod.

"Yeah, but we looked everywhere in their cabins already. They're not there," he said. "And I doubt he'd have them in the cargo ship either."

"Then we'll keep looking," Steve said. Clint sighed as he nodded in accordance to the plan.

"We need to tail him when the ship docks," Natasha chimed in. "See if he had it delivered in the island."

The four created a new agenda, their movements to be tracked meticulously so Duquesne doesn't catch sight of Clint. And when the ship docked, the couples separated and engaged in their newly-wed manners.

The familiar arm now back on Natasha's shoulders, Steve walked out with her to the Pacific sun as they hopped on a tram to the metropolis of Honolulu (well, as urban as the place could get; which was still pretty rural in comparison to metropolitan New York where they all lived, lacking skyscrapers and other patches of concrete jungle).

Steve's arm remained on her shoulders as he leaned down to close the distance between his lips and her ear. "We need to talk at some point," he said, finally letting that feisty, unkempt cat out of the small bag.

She didn't stiffen the way he expected her to. She almost  _relaxed_  and that was too far down the list of how he though she would react to those words. She looked up at him with an unfamiliar smile. The first time that expression took over her was that morning, when she looked at him as he slept and her hands trailed along his jaw. It wasn't something Steve had ever seen before—more exotic than the island they were shoved into. "Yes we do," she said softly, a hand making it to the back of his neck as she massaged it softly. And to say that Steve was excited was an understatement. "Let's catch the bastard and we'll talk after."

He nodded frantically. Her promise became a newfound motivation to grab Jacques Duquesne by the collar and tie him up into the ship's hull and send him back to New York as soon as possible. This mission was going to end as soon as possible, because the relationship he wanted was going to commence right after that.

But the circumstances were different for Natasha. She didn't know what she was supposed to say. As a pragmatist, she should end it all, let Steve know that this wasn't something she wanted. But she knew that he would be an idiot to take that claim truthfully, because she had let herself dive into the motions far too much for him to think that she didn't mean some of the things she does. The small kisses she stole last night before heading to the jazz concert, the way she kissed his neck while they danced, her back on his front as they watched Duquesne (well…as  _he_  watched Duquesne while she busied herself with his neck), and her arms wrapped around his waist this morning. Those weren't movements of Natalie and Steph. Both of them knew it. Steve wasn't stupid enough to let those liquefy, to turn them to water under the bridge.

Yet, Natasha also knew that creating a relationship with him wasn't correct. Because at the end of the day she would have to go back with Karpov. She was reminded of the postponement of their conversation, that she would need to find her old handler at some point tonight when they're back on the ship so she can gauge exactly what's going on back in her homeland. Natasha needed to understand why she had to return so soon. And even if she can make an agreement, even if she could persuade him to let this go on another year, Steve would be hurt even  _more_  then if they engaged in something serious. Breaking it off now was the practical choice, because indulging in him any further would just bring him pain that she was trying so hard to save him from.

They walked around the island like the couple they were supposed to be. And Natasha couldn't help but think that their chemistry was birthed from their desire to be the real couple they  _ought_  to be. It felt right, his thumbs running circles around the back of her hand as they walked along the busy streets. The way he would steal kisses on the cheek for show, but there would be a certain pause as he broke away so he could look her in the eyes to let her know that they were more than actors on a clandestine stage. And sometimes, he would introduce them both to the adorable native vendors,  _Mr._ and  _Mrs. Rogers_. How such a thing flew out of his mouth so comfortably like he owned it, like he'd said it a million times to the point of belief—it should be too much for Natasha. She  _should_  run away, because it was scary. Because even if she did decided to put herself in the relationship with him, this was still scary in its own spectrum. That if the world disappeared, if her assignment dissolved and it didn't exist in this time and space, she would still be  _scared_  of putting herself out there, out into the world of romance, because Natasha feared nothing but relationship. Because every single one she had forged she had put herself too close to, and they all resulted in deaths, her being the survivor in all of them. Opening up, being vulnerable to people she knew loved her, only ended one way, and that was a gun on her hand and a bullet in them.

She thought about Vanya. Her best friend. The redhead pulling the trigger only feet away from the other girl as Natasha felt the earth paused on its axis, the bullet penetrating her best friend's neck as the life left her eyes. That was a slow scene that brandished Natasha's nights, forcing her out of sleep often even if it happened thirteen years ago. And then Alexei, that one was just two years ago. Seeing the pain on his face as he realized the betrayal within her—Natasha letting out three bullets from her weapon as he surrendered to her, a harbinger for the afterlife; she was a black widow spider. Those were sacrifices she made for the Republic. She made choices that would prove naught if Natasha took herself away from this assignment. So many people died because of the choices she made for her old country, and so many more people will die in this new country if she didn't follow through with the rest of it.

There were also the Maximov twins, two people she had grown to love. They were probably ambushed somewhere in Novi Grad…somewhere in their homes. All because Bruskin told her to. All because she made a choice to serve her country no matter the cost.

But Steve. It was a gravitational pull, one Bruce wouldn't be able to study because it was magic, not physics. Steve, the closest person who gave her everything, the family she had now with all four of them, the unwavering belief and trust ever since the beginning, the freedom. Those weren't possible had it not been for him. And what was she going to repay him with? Betrayal. Just like Vanya. Just like Alexei. Just like Wanda and Pietro. Two people who loved her. Two people she killed.

If this assignment doesn't reach its end, Bruskin will seek out all the people she had created a life with. He was going to make her life a living hell by bringing in people she cared about and forcing her to kill them—just like he always had. It was his modus operandi. So the mission was going to see finality, but Natasha was going to save the people she cared about at the end of it. That was really the only option.

The one thing she doesn't know is whether putting herself in a relationship with Steve was  _part_  of that option. If such was necessary. And much to her dismay, it wasn't. But she had grown far from practical at this point.

"I have eyes on him," Bobbi said through their earpieces. The other pair were on the other side of the island, taking a different shuttle so the team could cover more ground with more eyes.

"I wanna stab his eyeballs," Clint said. Steve couldn't help but laugh as he heard it. "He won't recognize me if he's blind."

" _Clint_ ," Bobbi spoke in a tone that should be reserved for when she became a mother. But her partner's childish query sounded deserving of it, anyhow.

And because the weight of finding Jacques was lifted off of their shoulders, Natasha and Steve made their way to the beach. The woman was clinging onto her laptop as they sat on the sand, looking for anomalies. Natasha put her earpiece on the beach blanket while Steve kept alert to anything the other pair might say. He did, however, mute their end of it, because he couldn't wait to dive into conversation with her.

He gave her a kiss on the shoulder. "Steve," she started, a tone of protest. He didn't listen as he kept trailing the kisses. "I'm working."

"I know," he said against her skin. "And Bobbi and Clint have him." Usually, their roles would be reversed, Steve having full attention on the mission as Natasha whispered ease in his ears. His lips made it to her neck, and she should be caving, but as she found the number of the cabin Vasily was staying in, she froze in horror. "Everything okay?" he asked, now alert of her sudden change.

She shut her computer, turning around as she pushed him against the blanket with a palm on his chest. He smirked, letting go of the earlier question, thinking that her sudden change just came from the looming arousal he was sure he instilled in her with the few kisses he left on her skin.

She straddled him, aware that someone could be watching them, but the nearest people she last saw were meters away down the beach. Natasha retaliated as she pushed her lips to his collarbone, her tongue moving as she moved her mouth down to his chest. A small, playful flick of his nipple from her tongue caused him to laugh slightly, a chuckle that encouraged her movement even further down south. But before she could get to where she wanted to, the soldier's hands made it around her neck as he pushed her back up, asking for her lips on his. She obliged, moans escaping her throat as passion engulfed them both. She felt him through his board shorts, the thin fabric of her bikini giving her every feeling of him, but still not enough. She loved the sound that rose from his throat as her hips swayed to push their torsos even closer than they already were, but it wasn't until he separated them that she realized this wouldn't turn into sex on the beach.

"You up to talk now?" he asked. Steve always found the most inconvenient ways of communication. Both her hands were set on his chest as he started his declarations. "We need to address, uhm…certain changes in our arrangement…I think."

She laughed slightly at his awkwardness, and though he had grown more assertive with the evolution of their relationship, there were still remnants of signature Steve. Her face were inches away from him at the aftermath of their kisses, her setting her elbows underneath her like a sphinx. She could divert, prolong their desire for communication because of her fears—because she can always be coward when she needed to be despite constant exhibitions of boldness on the field and her every day life. But every day life was always different if the days included Steve. Natasha could feel her brevity as the impending conversation lulled her thoughts in ones of hesitation and faltering agency. She still hadn't made a choice about where this talk is supposed to be. It was really all up to her considering that the soldier wore his heart on his sleeve and she knew everything about what he wanted from her.

"And I know that we talked about a lot of things then…" he continued, fingers of his hand wrapping a strand of loose hair around her ear. "But it's been a year and I think you know that things have changed."

"They have," she said with confidence as she pursed her lips into a smirk. "For one, I just found out you have a role play kink and we can bring that to life once were back home."  _Home_ —wherever that was. Not that they both shared one, but she made it sound like it. She also realized she diverted, like she always does. No matter how impractical and how much she's changed, there were still things about her Steve couldn't alter.

He laughed slightly. "Yes, that's definitely a change," he said with a smile. "But you know what I'm talking about, Nat."

Steve was never one to beat around the bush anyway. She sighed, keeping her content veneer, one she knew was such a  _real_  thing. She was atop the man she wanted to be with. And this was far from Steph and Natalie. This whole thing was purely Natasha and Steve. "What do you want, Steve?" she asked, making sure to say his name so that this whole thing doesn't get lost into the translation of their characters for the field.

His eyes grew dark, not one of lust, she knew that. It was more than the desire to have her in bed with him. It was the amalgamation of all of their years together, of finally putting puzzle pieces to make a whole that told Steve exactly what he was supposed to be to her. Not a savior. Not a bodyguard. Not a work partner. "You," he whispered.

And Natasha could most definitely cry at the admission even if she had always known what the answer was. She paused for a moment and tried to revel in the scene, one she didn't want to disappear. She wanted every detail, the small speck of sand that patched the side of his neck, his eyebrows and the small crease in between them because he was waiting patiently, though ardently, for a response, his fingers still to the side of her face even if that loose strand of hair had found its rightful place long ago. This was something she needed to keep in her head for a long time. It was a token of hope. That maybe the Black Widow can have him. That maybe he  _can_  be safe in her hands. She would never deserve someone so loving of everything because of the complete dichotomy that was herself, but maybe a small taste of it was overdue.

And her lips met his as an answer. Her mouth colliding with his as the hand on her face turned into two, one on each side, his devotion different now—it wasn't just about making her feel good anymore, it was making sure she knew just how much she meant to him. This wasn't a means for an orgasm, or a promise of a good time. This was a promise of a good tomorow, not necessarily of a good  _life_ , but one he knew he was already working towards anyway. And Natasha grew too greedy, like the one that succumbed her superiors. She wanted it. It was going to hurt Steve, but she  _wanted_  it so bad. Because maybe everything can turn out to be okay. She found where Vasily lain, and she was going to make sure that everything turns out okay.

His teeth tugged at her bottom lip, a silent ask of entrance that she obliged to, her mouth opening as his familiar tongue wandered in crevasses he knew too well already. She let out a moan, a sigh of relief, of contentedness, before she separated. And then words wanted to leave her mouth with a sentience that made her unable to control them.  _I want you, too,_  her brain wanted to say. And she was about to project that into sound at the small distance between them until Steve suddenly froze from under her. Her face distorted in confusion, seeing the frantic way his hand darted to his ear to click the button that unmuted their end. "Clint's been made," he said with worry. Natasha didn't need anymore than that as she searched for her translucent clothes to cover her bikini and darted for her own earpiece. She pushed her laptop into the sack she held and both of them ran back to the shuttle station, uncaring at the blanket they left behind.

"Bobbi, what's going on?" Natasha asked as they hopped onto the seats of a private golf cart. Steve bribed the driver to offer him the vehicle, saying that he'll have it back in a second, unscratched (a completely empty promise). The soldier reasoned that they were late for something and the wheelman was more than happy to accommodate with the burning hole three green Benjamin bills scorched through his pocket.

"Hawkeye's radio silent and I don't have eyes on him," the other spy said, her tone worrisome.

"Clay," Steve asked a little too desperately for a leader. "Do you copy?" The three stayed silent, hoping for an affirmative but none came.

"I'm on the move," Bobbi said after the long reticence of optimism rendered insufficient at trying to locate the man. "He said that Jack made him when he was at the pool, and then nothing."

"We're on our way," Natasha replied. And it wasn't until she realized the unlikelihood of Clint being anywhere off the ship far away from where Duquesne kept his things, because Duquesne  _wouldn't_  be the kind to stray far away from them now knowing that his old nemesis was in the premises. "Scratch that. Turn this around, Steve." For a moment he looked at her with unmitigated stew but after the correct synapses in his brain started firing at the rightful places, he realized that he trusted the woman with his life and whatever she had in mind was probably the proper one.

"Where are you going?" Bobbi asked before Steve could. The soldier turned the golf cart in an abrupt and whiplash-inducing revolution, Natasha firmly placing her gaze on her lap where she opened her laptop. She was looking to ping his earpiece.

"What's the serial on his comm, Barb?" she asked, dismissing her earlier question. After the blonde spy responded so, having written down all of their telecom information before stashing them in her luggage. Natasha's effort proved unsuccessful seeing that it was offline. "Shit."

"Nat," Steve said. "I don't know where we're going."

"The docks," she said straightly as she tried to figure out a way to find his location. "Duquesne's not leaving his wads of money after he finds out his old frenemy who also happens to be a retired thief is on the same boat."

Steve and Bobbi seemed to follow where she was going with it. "I don't know how he'd be able to snatch Clay back into the ship so quickly. I just lost him ten minutes ago."

"Maybe he gave a golf cart driver three-hundred dollars," Steve said, his humor misplaced and only something Natasha would understand.

"Mandy's probably in on it," Natasha said. "She does have his money in her cabin after all."

"You're gonna make it to the ship before me, but if you're right about this, stay  _low_ ," Bobbi said. "You two have a cover to keep."

"Yeah, I'd sure miss having wealthy elitist conversations with a crook slash murderer," Natasha hummed. Bobbi didn't reply at that.

"Does Mandy's cabin have a balcony?" Steve asked, revving the small engine of the slow wagon as they saw the large ship in sight.

"Yeah," Natasha said as she stashed the laptop back in her bag when her efforts proved futile, grabbing the gun she managed to get past security, and securing it up her thigh where her shorts concealed them. "They booked one of the largest suites." The spy hopped out of the cart before it reached a halt, and Steve being who he was,  _parked_  it. He saw the man he stole the vehicle from and after a light wink, tossed him the keys. "If Clay's in their room, I'm sure he's just seething at the pompousness," she continued with a smirk once Steve met her pace. He laughed slightly, the gravity of the situation lacking with both of them knowing that the archer can more than handle himself. It was all just a means of trying to find him in an struggle not to jeopardize the mission.

"Oh," Natasha said as she glanced up the ship before entering it. "Found him."

Steve also looked up, seeing as Clint  _looked_  like he was having a civil conversation with Jacques, like he  _chose_  to be there. Natasha snatched the soldier inside the ship before he could protest, knowing that had the perp turned his head just slightly, he would've been able to see the pair staring up at him. "What the  _hell_  is he doing?" Natasha whispered with indignation in her voice. "Mockingbird, we have eyes on him."

There was a heave on the other end of the comm like Bobbi had been holding her breath for way too long. "Is he in danger?"

Natasha peeked her head outside the entrance slightly, just so she could get a read on the animated conversation Clint seemed to be having with Jacques. "Doesn't look like it…" she started. "I need you back here to interrupt, though. We don't know what the hell is happening."

"Copy that," the other woman said.

"Clay might actually stab him given the chance," Steve said as the two walked further inside the ship, looking like they were heading to their cabin, but stopping just one deck short where they knew Duquesne's girlfriend reserved their room, this was the only way to get to the cabin, and there wasn't much on the side they were on, meaning that if they were to try leaving, Duquesne and Brandt would have to pass them.

"I'll beat him myself if he does," Natasha said and Steve couldn't help but chuckle.

"I have eyes on him, I'm comin' up," Bobbi said and they could hear her frantic footsteps running up the vacant stairs shortly after. Running past them, not trying to waste time, he ran into the entrance of the ship hallway and composed herself. Walking slowly for reprieve of her heaving, she knocked on their door. Neither of the other pair could see what she was up to, but the conversation in their earpieces told them everything.

"May I help you?" a woman's voice said over the comm.

"Yeah, my husband is here," Bobbi replied. Natasha and Steve could just imagine that angry smile Bobbi would have, an effort to be civil but tight enough for the receiver to know that she was impatient.

"I'm sorry, who?" the woman said. They've deduced that to be Mandy.

"I literally see him right behind you," Bobbi said in an irritated manner, a tone that her audience knew wasn't for show. Steve stiffened when he heard her say, "Clint!", but then realized that his cover had already been blown, knowing that Jacques  _knew_  him. They pictured Bobbi barging past the woman. "I think I might need to get you one of those shirts that say ' _If found, return to Barbara.'_  and I'd have the ' _I'm Barbara.'_  one because no matter how ugly I think they are, it seems necessary."

There was a pause, a small gasp that escaped her lips and that was enough for Steve and Natasha to run down the hallway and stand just outside of the now closed door. "Drop the act," they heard Jaques say. A gun cocking through the earpiece hiked Steve and Natasha's vitals. The redhead walked to the adjacent cabin, using her StarkPhone to hack through the card swipe. Steve nodded as he stayed in front of the front door. Natasha walked silently through the large cabin, the room that shared Brandt's balcony.

Natasha peered around the corner and saw that Clint was held down with Jacques's gun under the table. She imagined that his girlfriend had one on Bobbi, too, with them being inside the room far away from Natasha's peering gaze. The spy wondered why everything was so still when both Clint and Bobbi could surely take them down in a swift.

"I have eyes on Clint, Steve, don't engage until I say so," Natasha said.

"What's happening, Clint?" Bobbi asked in that shaken damsel in distress tone. Natasha kept still as she watched Jacques's demeanor change to the woman inside the room, looking above Clint's head as he questioned the woman.

"Do you wanna tell her or should I?" Jacques said with malicious intent. "I mean…there couldn't have been anyone else trying to snoop around our room. You've lost your touch, Barton."

"Never really called myself a spy," Clint said, the same virulent spite leaving his mouth. Natasha tried to figure out how they were made, and that lapse in attention when she was stuck in the bathroom with Karpov rang some bells. She chided herself for her compromised concentration, knowing that they wouldn't be in this spot had she stayed long enough to keep Jacques and Mandy at bay in the breakfast hall. She realized that she was the rich one, that they probably didn't take further interest in speaking with Steve because she was the intended contact. "You walk around killin' federal reserve agents on your spare time?" Clint taunted.

The swordsman shrugged. "When they're in my way," he responded.

"Where is it Jacques? You and I both know you haven't fired a gun more than a few times in your life. The Glock doesn't suit you as well as the stick," Clint said, a glare escaping him.

"Says the primitive man who launches his own sticks for a living," the man responded. Natasha could picture Bobbi rolling her eyes at the egomaniac, stick-comparing, asinine conversation that was so the kind of thing Clint would indulge in. "The weapon's still in New York. Seems like you didn't look hard enough."

And then it all happened so fast, Clint standing up swiftly to shield Bobbi from the gun that twitched in Duquesne's hand. Two shots fired, and the whole blur between Natasha yelling "now, Steve" in the earpiece and the loud clanging of a door separating at its hinges, to both Mandy and Duquesne on the ground, their arms behind their back as Bobbi and Clint respectively straddled them from behind. With Jacques' cheek on the ground, he had complete eye-line to Natasha who held a gun straight to his head, that look of realization dawning over him. "Shit," he said, and the redhead just pursed her lips, eyebrow cocking as he let him bask in the recognition. There was a streak of blood running down Clint's arm, and Natasha saw the simultaneous hit Jacques and Mandy took to the head, Bobbi and Clint mirroring each other as they took the discarded guns of the perpetrators and met the magazines to the back of their heads.

"You're bleeding," Natasha said as she holstered her Glock.

"Flesh wound," Clint said as he stood up exasperatingly. Steve tossed him a towel from inside the room and the archer pressed it against the agape scratch.

Before he could explain himself, Bobbi went on a tirade. "What the heck happened? Did you approach him?!" Steve didn't want any part of it as he took a phone out to call Fury about the situation.

"Look, Bob I—"

"You're so stupid," Bobbi said as she hit him on the woundless arm.

"He saw me!" he yelled. And the two engaged in nonsensical conversation that Natasha could only roll her eyes at, a meaningless feud that only established couples found themselves in. Well…she guessed that despite the lack of titles, Clint and Bobbi will be in that scenario at some point or another in the near future.

"That was…" Natasha started as she walked away from the pair and neared Steve as he held the phone up in his ear and waited for a response on the other side. "Anticlimactic."

The soldier laughed a little. "Isn't that how we want this to be?"

She shrugged. "You're right," she said. "Thank god so I can go out and waste S.H.I.E.L.D. money on  _really_  expensive wine one last night."

Steve laughed before focusing his attention on the phone, now answered by the director.

 

After drinks (way too many than even the vodka-trained body of Natasha could handle), she and Bobbi retired for the night while Clint and Steve stayed with their targets, Duquesne and Brandt bound in their room as the two agents waited for exfil.

They drank their beers at the balcony, looking into the room as they watched the perpetrators, now conscious but neither energized enough to fight. "You two ever danced around the question?" Clint asked, his lips to the mouth of the beer bottle.

Steve looked at him with confusion. "What question?"

Clint gulped the large swig of beer he took. "You know…the one where you're work partners, but then you feel like you'd be great as  _more_  than work partners." Steve laughed. He didn't know if he should respond honestly, but before he could reply, the archer interrupted him. "I mean…what if it gets awkward between me and Bobbi. And then it affects our work but, like, Steve…I  _like_  her. And I haven't liked anyone since Cherry."

"You and I both know she was a waste of time," Steve said. "And that Bob isn't."

"You're right, but still," Clint said. "That's some tricky waters."

"It sure is." Steve was thankful at the quick passing of conversation, Clint not needing an answer to his early question.

"How far do you think a man should wait before taking his fate into his own hands?" Clint asked.

Steve thought the question himself. "I don't think you should."

"What?"

"Wait," the soldier said, looking the other man in the eyes. "You shouldn't wait."

And he thought about Natasha. That he shouldn't have waited. But he also knew that they had the whole world in front of them. That when they get back home, missions aside, they still had so much time together even if they walk into assignments believing that there are no guarantees in life. And that was the whole reason he feared time passing him by, relishing in the single things, the quickening need to live life with Natasha as much as he could—because in a world where no guarantees lain, he only knew one thing, and that was the insurmountable amount of happiness he felt with the woman.

 

Natasha, instead of sleeping, sobered up for an hour. Then, grabbing a gun and hitching it behind her, walked down a deck to the room number she had ingrained in her head ever since she found out about it from the cruise database. Her knuckles met the door a few times before the Soviet spy opened the door.

"Ah, Natalia," he said, opening the door wider for the woman to step in. " _A little later than expected, but you've always been a woman of surprises_."

" _You know that's untrue_ ," she said, remaining standing and declining as he offered her a shot of vodka. " _I have much to do. What does Colonel Bruskin need so quickly?_ "

" _Von Strucker was in the middle of a creation when his laboratory was decimated_ ," he started. " _And despite the failures at trying to replicate it…we have found a breakthrough_."

" _How pertinent is it for him to hurry my project?_ "

" _Not as important as I believe…but you and I both know he's always blinded himself with an overwhelming desire to feed his greed whenever he's grazed with a speck of victory,_ " he reasoned, taking a swig of the Russian alcohol. " _You're one of the more…significant illustrations of his gluttony._ "

Her head moved only slightly as she tried to control herself from looking for curious about it. " _I don't understand,_ " she said.

A small laugh escaped his lips, the tone falling somewhere between humor and not. " _A year out of the Red Room, Natalia. You hadn't even seen that much of the world yet. Yes, you've gone on missions, all of them successful. It wasn't like he didn't have any grounds for the desire that consumed him once he saw your potential. But…potential is only the promise of something good—it provides no warranty to the future. We could only measure how good you could be,_ _not how great you_  will _be_. _And he decided to put you in a mission alone, no back-up, no security, just_ one _year after your graduation. And a mission that we believed would take six years to really work. Alexi pounced at the sight of success—he moved on_ theory _, not science._   _And I know you'll deliver, Natalia. We all do. There is a lot hanging on your shoulders, but had I been given a choice, I would've asked him to wait on you. But he didn't and that's something I think we're both learning to live with. The faith of the Republic on your hands is a responsibility none of use sought for. But it's still the truth we live in. None of us doubt you, but the concern doesn't rest._ "

Natasha took in everything he said, nodding at the correct moments. " _You have nothing to worry about my work here_ ," she said.

It didn't look like he took that with a grain of salt, but he'd never been good at expressing his true emotions. " _And Von Strucker's creation?_ " she asked.

" _I'm afraid that's on a need-to-know circumstance, but I'll give you this. The Maximovs have been a great deal of help for such_ ," he deadpanned. Natasha's breath caught in her throat. Wanda? Pietro? Was he saying they were alive. " _But I didn't come here for that. I would like you to know that I am formulating an excuse to keep you on your ruse because I don't trust that everything is ready yet. But…best be warned, Natalia, there will be eyes on you._ "

The woman nodded, her eyes wandering for a split second as he stared at his shot glass. That small time she utilized the distraction, she saw a badge on the corner of a coffee table. One too familiar and she felt a distaste in her mouth. " _Thank you_ ," she said. " _For trusting me_."

He smirked. " _You and I both know I don't trust you,_ " he said as he stared at her. " _But we also know that I have no choice but…with the fate of our nation resting on you and all._ " She kept her posture still, wanting so badly for this conversation to end. " _You can go. But don't stray too far, little one._ "

Natasha almost stumbled out of the cabin frantically, her feet speeding as she ran up to her deck. She barged into her and Steve's room, seeing that it was empty still because of he was on watch. Checking to see that the buffers were still working, and in paranoid manner, turning the buffers of the StarkPhone on, she dialed Fury's number.

And in the midst of the turmoil, she didn't stop to think. The ringing of the phone grew faint. Karpov will know if she calls him in—if she says something and an unseen anomaly interferes with his agenda, he will know exactly who did it.

"Romanoff, this better be good," he said. She didn't take into account that he was three hours ahead, well deep into the night. She didn't care only because he'd done the same to her more times that she could count for the sake of the job. But this was for the sake of their lives.

"There's a mole," she said, her fingers typing away at the computer as she accessed the S.H.I.E.L.D. database that she had used Stark's technology for years ago. She made up the decision on a whim, taking Karpov down as soon as she could. It wasn't a practical decision, because the moment he goes radio-silent and Bruskin won't be able to reach him because he would be in custody, the whole Soviet agency would be alarmed. Nonetheless, she claimed, "We have a spy in the agency."

"Tell me something I didn't already know," he said, his voice grunting and taking in news as if it wasn't cause for alarm. And then she grew alert…because what if Karpov wasn't the spy he was talking about? Surely she saw his I.D. badge, how it said S.H.I.E.L.D. in bold letters, protected by a thin film of a transparent pocket and a clip at the end of it. It was something she wore to work every time she was there. She couldn't have been wrong about what she saw.

And if Fury had knowledge, why wasn't he doing anything about it? What if he believed that the spy was  _her_  all along?

"I'm sorry, what?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"We have a lot to talk about once you're in D.C.," he said, and the line went cold. The buzzing birthed from the silence of a telephone call disappeared, and Natasha stared at her hands as she thought about the possibility of her director having  _known_  she had been plaguing them all along. And what if she was used as a pawn? Him watching over her knowing all about her deception and doing nothing about it  _just_ to test her?

And what hurt the most was the possibility that Clint and Steve would be the first to know once Fury blows her cover. There was no doubt that they'd even be there at the meeting of her unraveling. A sick twist in her stomach asked her to go to the bathroom, and once the bile left her throat, the contents of the food she had eaten that day mixing in with the toilet water, she flushed and stared at herself in the mirror.

She couldn't get into a relationship with Steve. It wasn't right in the first place. If anything, this was all a wake up call. She couldn't do that to him, not after everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "привет" --
> 
> transliteration: "privyet"  
> translation: "hello"


End file.
